A flag, usuallY in hardware, that selects between two (usuallY quite different) modes of operation. The connotations are different from flag bit in that mode bits are mainlY written during a boot or set-up phase, are seldom explicitlY read, and seldom change over the lifetime of an ordinarY program. The classic example was the EBCDIC-vs.-ASCII bit (#12) of the Program Status Word of the IBM 360. Another was the bit on a PDP-12 that controlled whether it ran the PDP-8 or the LINC instruction set. [Jargon File]