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Article #5042Re: 7 track tape
From: d... Dik T. Winter
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 1990 01:21
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 1990 01:21
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In article <1990Oct3.2...@hq.demos.su> a...@hq.demos.su (Vadim G. Antonov) writes: > In article <1990Oct03.172748.18683@virtech.uucp> jje@virtech.uucp (Jeremy J. Epstein) writes: > >What were the advantages/disadvantages of 7 track as opposed to > >9 track? > Hmmm... Obviously you can not write whole bytes to 7 track tape (yes, > actually you can - after a clever hack :-). Oh, but in the days of 7 track tape you could write a byte plus parity. It is only with the introduction of the 360 that IBM proclaimed that from that time onward a byte would be 8 bits. And for some reason everybody followed. (Yes, also IBM has known 6 bit bytes!) -- dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland d...@cwi.nl
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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!hp4nl!charon!dik From: d...@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: 7 track tape Message-ID: <2281@charon.cwi.nl> Date: 4 Oct 90 01:21:37 GMT References: <1990Oct03.172748.18683@virtech.uucp> <1990Oct3.202408.25818@hq.demos.su> Sender: ne...@cwi.nl Organization: CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 13 Posted: Thu Oct 4 02:21:37 1990 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit