No, Bill, a "byte" has ALWAYS been 8-bits.

Not so. It appears that the term "byte" originated in the IBM 360, where it is indeed 8 bits. And certainly all present day computers use "byte" to refer to an octet and not to any other size. That has not always been true. The CDC 6000 series used 6-bit characters, though those weren't usually referred to as "byte". On the other hand, on the PDP10 there were "byte instructions" which would operate on an arbitrary piece of the (36-bit) word. On that machine, "bytes" when used to store characters were often 9 bits long. That's where things like "meta" and "alt" started, see the Hacker's Dictionary. paul !----------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Paul Koning, NI1D, C-24183 ! 3Com Corporation, 1-3A, 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough MA 01772 USA ! phone: +1 508 229 1695, fax: +1 508 490 5873 ! email: paul_koning@isd.3com.com or paul_koning@3mail.3com.com ! Pgp: 27 81 A9 73 A6 0B B3 BE 18 A3 BF DD 1A 59 51 75 !----------------------------------------------------------------------- ! "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ! -- and miss!" ! -- Robert A. Heinlein, "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" ! in "Time Enough for Love"