Diane BruceThis post
https://fosstodon.org/@deshipu/116510956431897662
tongue in cheek as it is, idly got me wondering if building a 5 bit computer would have ever made sense. The PDP-8/S was a *ONE* bit computer in the sense it reused the ALU one bit at a time cycling the bits through. It had also earned the nickname the PDP-8/Slow for this reason.
A University school mate of mine owned one!
The minimum 'byte' was 6 bits and it used RAD50 for this reason. So no a 5 bit computer would not have made sense, to save RAM as jokingly put, but we come close.
ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ (@[email protected])
Ancient Romans wrote everything in upper case, and wrote numbers with letters, because they could only use 5-bit encoding due to severe RAM shortages.