PARTIAL BYTE TRANSMIT APPARATUS

An apparatus in a digital communication system having the capability for transmitting or receiving a partial byte in the final byte position of the information field. Thus, a non-byte-oriented message may be blocked into bytes of any convenient size, and the final bits, if they do not completely fill up the final byte, can still be accommodated using the partial byte capability. The size of the final byte is indicated by adding a pointer bit to the character in memory. The partial character is right justified in its byte and a one (i.e. pointer bit) is inserted immediately to the left of the character and zeros are filled to the left to complete the byte. This byte is placed in a transmit register; a partial byte is shifted to the right until a pattern of all zeros and a one remain in the register; this pattern is recognized by the hardware and indicates that the end of the partial byte has been transmitted. For received data, the process is reversed.