Decimal V Binary??

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Thu Sep 23 10:43:22 2004

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Donoghue <jim_at_smithy.com> writes:

 Jim> On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 22:08, William Donzelli wrote:
>> > There are SOME people (I am NOT one) who actually feel that >
>> DECIMAL is the right way to go in computers!
>>
>> If the computers are doing my bank statements, then yes, I am one
>> of them.

 Jim> I've always wondered what systems/processors (other than IBM
 Jim> mainframes) that had hardware decimal arithmetic support. I
 Jim> don't mean 'decimal adjust' instructions, I'm talking about full
 Jim> add/subtract/multiply/divide/etc. The only other one I know of
 Jim> is the Wang VS, which came standard with support for 'packed
 Jim> decimal' data, and even floating-point decimal. The Wang VS
 Jim> instruction set was very similar to the IBM 360/370, even the
 Jim> packed decimal data format was the same.

VAX and PDP11 (with the CIS option) for starters.

     paul
Received on Thu Sep 23 2004 - 10:43:22 BST