> octal location 033 *of course* this predates the invention of hex, or at least... | Hacker News

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naniwaduni on Nov 21, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: A Mystery of Unix History

> octal location 033

of course this predates the invention of hex, or at least the modern conventional notation for it

kps on Nov 21, 2019 [–]

Pre-PDP11, DEC had machines with 12, 18, and 36 bit words. Those are all multiples of 3, so octal was more natural. (For the 16-bit PDP11, the instruction format made octal natural.)

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