There are a few missing data there. First, there is the issue of the dualing of a couple of ASCII code points.
Second, while ANSI did define an ASCII-8 standard for punched cards, it didn't actually assign any code pages in the upper half. IBM had to guess at ANSI's direction for ASCII-8, and guessed wrong. Third, EBCDIC didn't have the same collating sequence as any of the 6-bit BCD codes. Fourth, there was no technical reason that IBM couldn't use existing peripherals and translate character sets in software. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, February 10, 2020 5:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: UTF16 to EBCDIC On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:50:59 +0000, Pew, Curtis G wrote: >On Feb 10, 2020, at 3:01 PM, Mike Schwab wrote: >> >> ASCII wasn't finalized when the S/360 was announced. And it needed to >> use existing 7 bit peripherals, tapes, etc. > >But System/360 was pupposed to be an ASCII machine, or at least to transition >to ASCII long term. There was a bit in the PSW to determine if ASCII was in >use or not. The IBM engineers, programmers, lower-level managers, and >*customers* didn’t understand the importance of it, though, so it never >happened. In System/360 the ASCII bit was repurposed to switch between EC mode >(needed for DAT) and BC mode. > >Today those of us who use z/OS, etc. are paying the price for that lack of >vision. > +1. The late Bob Bemer with impressive credentials argued compellingly: https://secure-web.cisco.com/1pZnzDmGlFNCqW-nXOw_EcOssIHtWbElWN-baqOsG2fTedLsKE_no_RBtwEh-lozUoDvPFnhWIE_tL0CqnF7yd2xSM_jSiZuopskeH1ZF35ExhKYc3FSl4x_rfBpXFG3l4tazGWnJU4Bv-b3iFv5KTpqrgO2MokhBKdPd0Z6x32fph8dRmQbwBgqwicIGdwEKTfJ0hS1SAlZClVKhW8V6cdCFlpGQAtJyDY19nEDyoXDCMnIuUH-jUU197g6RUgzszTNfrGNfHm5ylBWP2iMSy7UZCyrq8Sb4VIm4CXKNYKMxG9ZlshjWe2XsT3xTYtKrE2e0nAn3-sfNSisffX9kfUdqQef32L5lPSvUPy-kERbqawEiA9ya7HtSXB1ye2OhsCN4Gfpvcggvm3HgpIi-NwVZ8ywyDsj8IItN75PqdYtKvxxPRm85WdIKfGyiru7n/https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20180513204153%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bobbemer.com%2FP-BIT.HTM ... that ASCII was ready; IBM wasn't. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
