[Simh] VAX/VMS

[lists at openmailbox.org]

On Tue, 16 Feb 2016 10:28:27 -0500
Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> The using
> EBCDIC
> ​instead of​
>  ASCII
> ​ was a sad thing.   IBM had been heavy in development of ASCII and I
> believe even chaired the ANSI committee creating it.   In fact if you look
> at marketing literature, S360 was supposed to be the
> first commercial system to support it.   But with OS/360 being so late,
> Brooks was said to make the decision to keep the primary code EBCDIC (for
> compatibility).   Until the switch to Power years 25+ years later, IBM
> (and its users) would pay that price.

There was no switch to POWER. The very latest z Archicture machines still
use EBCDIC and it has never been an issue. Yeah, we prefer big-endian too.