Annoying octal notation

[sjm]

On Aug 21, 2:45 pm, John Nagle <na... at animats.com> wrote:
<snip>
>      In 2009, Unisys finally exited the mainframe hardware business, and the
> last of the 36-bit machines, the ClearPath servers, are being phased out.
> That line of machines goes back to the UNIVAC 2200 series, and the UNIVAC
> 1100 series, all the way back to the vacuum-tube UNIVAC 1103 from 1952.
> It's the longest running series of computers in history, and code for all
> those machines used octal heavily.

You're right that the 36-bit machines rely heavily on octal notation.
However, Unisys has not exited the hardware business.

The descendants of the original 36-bit 1100-series machines are now
called Dorado.  Unisys announced new models as recently as May 2009
(see http://unisys.com/unisys/news/detail.jsp?id=16900004).

I have the extreme pleasure of supporting a Dorado 180 and writing
Python code on Windows--the best of both worlds!

Cheers,
  Steve J. Martin