[Info-vax] AlphaVM-free emulator with all additional peripheral components

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Bob Koehler <koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote:

(snip regarding EBCDIC and ASCII)

>   While OS and utilities may be written to one character set or
>   another, I've never seen an instruction set that favored one.

For S/360 and descendants, UNPACK and the decimal instructions.

Closer to VMS, look at the VAX CVTPT and CTRRP instructions.
Also, the prefered signs for packed decimal instructions.

>   Printers and terminals are the only peripherals I can think of
>   that would differ.

and card readers (real or virtual). If you connect a terminal
to a 3705 through VM, though, an ASCII terminal would convert
to EBCDIC, then back to ASCII again!

>   Even card readers/punches I've dealt with could read/punch either
>   026 (BCD) or 029 (EBCDIC), via translation in the interface software.

Well, the letters, numbers, and many special characters are
the same. Even so, a byte for byte translation is likely done.

-- glen