[Info-vax] OT: IA-128 ???

[Bob Koehler]

In article <bf55318a-078f-431b-80bd-710de408bfe2 at a7g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>, Neil Rieck <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> writes:
> 
> Instructors at DEC (Kanata, Bedford, Maynard) in the early 80's didn't
> agree with this point of view. At that time, PDP-11 connected to
> memory via anywhere between 18 and 22 bits (depending upon the model)
> but this product line was considered a 16-bit system because of the
> width of the registers. Likewise with VAX, we saw lots of schemes to
> address more memory (well over 40-bits IIRC) but VAX was always
> considered a 32-bit system.

   And PDP-10 went up to 23 bit addressing, but it was still an 18 bit
   machine.

   We actually had one program that ran out of memory in 18 bits and we
   were so glad the TOPS-20 Fortran compiler just needed a compiler
   switch to use 23 bit.