Re: questions about bits and bytes

[Scott Brickner <sjb@universe.digex.net>]

Dr. Dimitri Vulis writes:
>I used to hack a CDC Cyber box designed by Seymour Cray before he started his
>oen company. It had the following curious features:
>
>1 word = 10 _bytes_ = 60 bits
>1 _byte_ = 6 bits

. . .

>I believe BESM-6 also had 6-bit bytes. I have the dox for it someplace
>(in Russian) but can't find them offhand.
>
>Moral: it's not necessarily redundant to say '8-bit byte'.

Which is precisely the reason the IETF always refers to "bytes" as
"octets".  "Octet" is defined to be eight bits, regardless of local
word sizes.