X-Nico

4 unusual facts about EBCDIC


EBCDIC

Open-source-software advocate and hacker Eric S. Raymond writes in his Jargon File that EBCDIC was almost universally loathed by early hackers and programmers because of its multitude of different versions, none of which resembled the other versions, and that IBM produced it in direct competition with the already-established ASCII.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers

VM2000 - EBCDIC-based hypervisor for S/390-compatible platform, capable of running multiple BS2000 and SINIX virtual machines

IBM card sorter

Other special characters and punctuation marks were added to the card code, involving as many as three punches per column (and in 1964 with the introduction of EBCDIC as many as six punches per column).

UTF-EBCDIC

IBM EBCDIC-based mainframe operating systems, such as z/OS, usually use UTF-16 for complete Unicode support.


Similar

EBCDIC |

CICS

In 1980, IBM executives failed to heed Ben Riggins' strong suggestions that IBM should provide their own EBCDIC-based operating system and integrated-circuit microprocessor chip for use in the IBM Personal Computer as a CICS intelligent terminal (instead of the incompatible Intel chip, and immature ASCII-based Microsoft 1980 DOS).

JEF codepage

JEF is a stateful EBCDIC charset used in Fujitsu mainframe systems called FACOM and some OASYS series personal word processors.

KEIS

KEIS is a stateful EBCDIC charset used in Hitachi mainframe systems.


see also