I cut my teeth on 370's and EBCDIC was all I knew for years.? ASCII seemed like they were just trying to be different!? I still remember "A" as C1 "a" was some other thing but who needed lower case anyway.?
Then there is EBCDIC....
Some machine still do BCD math!? (1806, 8080, 8085. z80).
Its how the logic is organized as a BCD computer was done (several times)
but from a logic reduction standpoint a binary math solution is few gates
to get the task done.
IF we ignore that than any number system is doable.
That's also factored from the 70s where I did control interface logic for
a 8 channel tape deck that had three level logic!? If that hurts, consider
that a spindle?has a clutch that can be forward, reverse or tension, or
brake that was?on, off, or drag.? Really!? So Trinary logic of levels had
to be reduced to a two bit code.
