Syllabic octal and split octal are two similar notations for 8-bit and 16-bit

octal number Octal (base 8) is a numeral system with eight as the base. In the decimal system, each place is a power of ten. For example: : \mathbf_ = \mathbf \times 10^1 + \mathbf \times 10^0 In the octal system, each place is a power of eight. For exam ...

s, respectively, used in some historical contexts.

Syllabic octal

''Syllabic octal'' is an 8-bit octal

number representation A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using digits or other symbols in a consistent manner. The same sequence of symbols may represent different ...

that was used by

English Electric The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during the war, made munitions, armaments and aeroplanes. It initially specialised in industrial el ...

in conjunction with their KDF9 machine in the mid-1960s. Although the word '

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

' had been coined by the designers of the

IBM 7030 Stretch The IBM 7030, also known as Stretch, was IBM's first transistorized supercomputer. It was the fastest computer in the world from 1961 until the first CDC 6600 became operational in 1964."Designed by Seymour Cray, the CDC 6600 was almost three tim ...

for a group of eight

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as ...

s, it was not yet well known, and English Electric used the word '

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

' for what is now called a byte.

Machine code In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonb ...

programming used an unusual form of

octal Octal (base 8) is a numeral system with eight as the base. In the decimal system, each place is a power of ten. For example: : \mathbf_ = \mathbf \times 10^1 + \mathbf \times 10^0 In the octal system, each place is a power of eight. For ex ...

, known locally as 'bastardized octal'. It represented 8 bits with three octal digits but the first digit represented only the two most-significant bits (with values 0..3), whilst the others the remaining two groups of three bits (with values 0..7) each. A more polite colloquial name was 'silly octal', derived from the official name which was ''syllabic octal'' (also known as 'slob-octal' or 'slob' notation,). This 8-bit notation was similar to the later 16-bit split octal notation.

Split octal

''Split octal'' is an unusual address notation used by

Heathkit Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company. The products over the decades have included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateu ...

's PAM8 and portions of HDOS for the Heathkit H8 in the late 1970s (and sometimes up to the present). It was also used by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

(DEC). Following this convention, 16-bit addresses were split into two 8-bit numbers printed separately in octal, that is base 8 on 8-bit boundaries: the first memory location was "000.000" and the memory location after "000.377" was "001.000" (rather than "000.400"). In order to distinguish numbers in split-octal notation from ordinary 16-bit octal numbers, the two digit groups were often separated by a slash (/), dot (.), colon (:), comma (,), hyphen (-), or hash mark (#). Most

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s and

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s used either straight octal (where 377 is followed by 400) or

hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...

. With the introduction of the optional HA8-6

Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080, offering a compelling altern ...

processor replacement for the

8080 The Intel 8080 is Intel's second 8-bit microprocessor. Introduced in April 1974, the 8080 was an enhanced successor to the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor, although without binary compatibility.'' Electronic News'' was a weekly trade newspa ...

board, the front-panel keyboard got a new set of labels and hexadecimal notation was used instead of octal. Through tricky number alignment the HP-16C and other

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

RPN calculators supporting base conversion can implicitly support numbers in split octal as well.

Syllabic octal

Split octal

See also

References

Further reading