From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On 02 Apr 2025 16:45:38 GMT, Aharon Robbins wrote:   
      
   > Octal was used heavily on the PDP-11, if you used the assembler.   
      
   All DEC’s systems used octal heavily, prior to the VAX. That’s when they   
   started using hex.   
      
   All the DEC machines prior to the PDP-11 had word lengths that were   
   multiples of 3 (12, 18, 36), so octal worked nicely. Even though the   
   PDP-11 was a 16-bit machine, fields in its instruction format were still   
   designed to line up with octal digits.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)