[wellylug] [OT] Internet & Citylink

[Donald Gordon]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:33:23 +1300, Pete Black <pete at marchingcubes.com> wrote:
> Also, while 8 bits is the conventional size of a byte (char) in modern 
> computer systems, it is by no means the only size used for the byte.
> 
> I believe older(like, 1970s old)  IBM systems used a 12 bit byte, so you 
> can't even be sure you are talking about specific quantities of bits 
> when specifying kilobytes/sec etc.

My impression (I could be wrong) was that bytes were always eight bits,
but that various architectures had different /word/ sizes.  The PDP-8
had a 12 bit word size, for instance.

donald