Questions tagged [ebcdic]
For questions related to the character encoding system, created by IBM for their System/360 range
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Is the substitution "ss" for "ß" on mainframes due to the SS being the largest customer of IBM punched cards outside the USA? [closed]
When I was a child, my German teacher (in a non-German speaking country) told us that the typed form for the letter "ß" in use in mainframes at that time was "ss" instead of "...
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What used EBCDIC code pages 1 thru 5?
For US English, the most commonly used EBCDIC code page is 37, which is one of the CECP code pages (Country Extended Code Page). The old IBM globalisation database has a 1986 copyright date for code ...
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Why did IBM decide to use 8 bits for EBCDIC?
Why did IBM decide to use 8 bits for EBCDIC?
7 bits per character seems reasonable, since 2^7 = 128 symbols which is enough for all English letters and special symbols.
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When did IBM start to use ASCII?
I’m trying to figure out when IBM switched to ASCII and when ASCII became a worldwide standard.
Moreover, did IBM make ASCII standard worldwide?
What I have found:
According to Wikipedia, IBM System /...
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Is the "IBM standard character set manual" around?
From Wikipedia's code page article:
Originally, the code page numbers referred to the page numbers in the IBM standard character set manual
Is any version of this publication available? I'd be ...
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Why wasn't EBCDIC designed with contiguous alphanumeric characters?
Inspired by this question on ASCII, I have wondered similar things about EBCDIC.
At work we have an EBCDIC file that gets sent to a mainframe (I presume an IBM one) and to view it on my laptop I ...