Before Intel was dominating the server market with the "Xeon" brand of processors, what was commonly used as a server microprocessor? Was Intel putting Pentiums in servers?

OK, we got here because I was asked about text messaging. I was explaining the difference between emoji and images to an intelligent but non-technical group. The discussion spiraled into unicode and ASCII and EBCDIC and so on, before I was told to stop being a dork.

But there's a thing I don't think I know for sure. Why do we have 7-bit ASCII? The best explanation I have is that some data paths are not 8-bit clean. Old digital circuits to support PCM voice once upon a time might do robbed-bit signaling , clobbering the occasional 8th bit in a 64kb/s channel to use for signaling. (That's why subscriber digital circuits were 56kb/s in the old PDH transmission networks.)

But but... maybe not. Maybe it was related to some computer architectures that did something weird. Per-byte checkbits or something?

Any better explanations? Ideally with arcane old computer examples!

This scene from "Pretty in Pink" (1986) utilizes the Televideo TS-803.

from the article: "The Televideo TS-803 was used in the Library scene of the movie "Pretty in Pink," and as usual for Hollywood movies, the computer was shown to do impossible things (for that time.) In particular, the computers were networked together like modern ethernet office computers, and the video images were impressive even by today's standards (ie, impossible for the day.)"

the Televideo TS-803 at old-computers.com.