45
votes
Why did the IBM 650 use bi-quinary?
I will just explain what a bit is. It's a binary digit. 0 is numerically zero, 1 is numerically one. If you want to add 1 and 1, in binary it overflows. the result is 0, and a carry out. As you ...
- 39.5k
30
votes
Accepted
Why did the IBM 650 use bi-quinary?
Quibbling about the right meaning of "bit" aside, some advantages of the 2-of-7 biquinary representation are:
Simpler circuits. In a quinary adder circuit, the output of each of the 5 output lines ...
18
votes
How does a biquinary adder work?
From a modern chip design perspective, the design of bi-quinary adders is quite simple. The addend inputs are each composed of two 1-hot signals, and the sum output is two 1-hot signals as well. ...
- 2,298
14
votes
Accepted
Were any decimal-based computers capable of handling text?
Really early computers like the Mark I and ENIAC didn't have enough memory to attempt to handle text; also the use-case was mostly calculations.
A number of decimal IBM computers used characters (with ...
- 29k
5
votes
Why did the IBM 650 use bi-quinary?
Storing a one-of-two selection using vacuum tube technology doesn't require one valve (combination of an anode, cathode, and one or more grids); it requires two. Thus, holding four bits would require ...
- 38.1k
5
votes
Why did the IBM 650 use bi-quinary?
This isn't intended as an answer per se, but I want to provide some support for OmarL's explanation by quoting official documentation for the machine, which speaks of binary values as units of ...
- 3,627
1
vote
Were any decimal-based computers capable of handling text?
Singer made a series of retail systems which were taken over by ICL and rebranded.
The ICL System 10 used 6-bit bytes for decimal and character data.
The ICL System 25 used 8-bit bytes, which were ...
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