[Simh] Semi-OT: 7-bit binaries

[Rich Alderson]

> Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2016 19:05:19 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Cory Smelosky <b4 at gewt.net>

> This is somewhat OT, but you people are honestly the best people to ask.

Why bother the SimH community, most of whom seem to be interested in Vaxen or
PDP-11s these days, when alt.sys.pdp10 is readily available?  They're hardly
the best to ask about non-8-bit architectures.

> I have a 7-bit-clean binary (from the SC-40), using klh10's wfconv (input 
> of 7, output of h - high density) gets me a readable file...containing 
> errors.

What does that mean????

SC-40 binary files contain 36-bit words.  Ain't no such thing as "7-bit-clean
binary" in an SC-40 context.  What are you really saying?  Or asking?

A 7-bit binary implies a 7-bit architecture, which I doubt anyone ever built.
Smallest non-8-bit architectures I've ever encountered are 12-bit systems;
smallest non-even word size I've ever encountered is 23 bits on the Bendix G-15.

> I am getting:

>> Memoby mtst be inhtialize firs

> which should be:

>> Memory must be initialized first

> What step am I missing in conversion? `file` finally knows what it is, 
> however.

It would seem to me that you aren't missing a step, you're missing a point
completely.  It looks as if you have stripped bits from a text file (which
is 7-bit ASCII packed 5 per word, left justified ).  What did you think you
were converting?  Why did you think you needed to convert anything at all?
What tool did you use?  What are you really trying to accomplish?

> converted/a.out: SPARC executable not stripped

What does a SPARC executable have to do with an SC-40?  What (why) do you
expect a Unix utility (the file program) to know anything at all about the
internal format of a PDP-10 file, whether text or binary????

> Thanks - non-8-bit text was never my strongest skill ;)

So you're expecting text, and have done something inappropriate to it.  To
what end?  Again, what are you really trying to accomplish?

                                                                Rich