On Aug 21, 2:45 pm, John Nagle <na...@animats.com> wrote: <snip> > In 2009, Unisys finally exited the mainframe hardware business, and the > last of the 36-bit machines, the ClearPath servers, are being phased out. > That line of machines goes back to the UNIVAC 2200 series, and the UNIVAC > 1100 series, all the way back to the vacuum-tube UNIVAC 1103 from 1952. > It's the longest running series of computers in history, and code for all > those machines used octal heavily.
You're right that the 36-bit machines rely heavily on octal notation. However, Unisys has not exited the hardware business. The descendants of the original 36-bit 1100-series machines are now called Dorado. Unisys announced new models as recently as May 2009 (see http://unisys.com/unisys/news/detail.jsp?id=16900004). I have the extreme pleasure of supporting a Dorado 180 and writing Python code on Windows--the best of both worlds! Cheers, Steve J. Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
