On Friday 29 December 2006 12:33, Ian C. Blenke wrote:
> Paul M Foster wrote:
> > No no no. BCD stores one digit per nibble. The "digits" here aren't
> > stored as digits. Each byte contains a binary number from 0-99. The
> > example above, expressed as hexadecimal, would be stored as 0x39.
>
> Right. Like I said, you already understand BCD isn't what we're talking
> about here.
>
Intriguing.
If a decimal "digit" is 0-9, then this "thing" (or byte) holding 0-99 might be
a "centimal" (cent for 100 ?), since each position in the array is a power of
100.
In the early years there were a number of odd schemes, usually to make use of
the hardware, e.g. the Univac SS-80, circa 1960, used magnetic cores for
logic in conjunction with a drum storage. They had an odd arrangement
whereby the lower bits were 0-5 and a high bit for something or other (my
memory fades...). Over the years I don't remember running across the 0-99
idea, however. It is certainly more memory efficient than storing one BCD
per byte, and maybe a little more computational efficient than storing two
BCD digits per byte.
Donald E Haselwood
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