From: anthk@openbsd.home   
      
   On 2025-04-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro  wrote:   
   > 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.   
      
   Why? "octal" means base eight ( as 'ocho' in Spanish, same Latin root).   
      
   forth>3 8 lcm .   
      
   24   
      
   Not very fitting for a 36 bit machine except for opcodes.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)