the 1970s. The 6400/6600/7600 family were definitely in the octal
world. Initially, the character set was 6-bit, with one character
reserved as an escape to mean that the next 6-bit chunk was to be
included, giving a 12-bit representation that added support for
lowercase letters
We called it “half-ASCII”, escaping with codes 74B and 76B. As far as I recall, it only worked
on some versions of some of the timesharing systems in some modes. We never had a lower
case print chain at Lehigh, SO ALL OUR OUTPUT WAS IN UPPER CASE.
And don’t get me started on 63- vs 64- character set.
The availability of ASCII on other operating systems was a great improvement in my life.
And certain neurons still remember crap like 22B is R in display code.
ches