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Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem!

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Andy "Krazy" Glew wrote:
> On 9/2/2011 6:44 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:

<snip>

>> Oh, shit.  I've noticed these posts have been going to comp.arch.
>> My apologies.  I'll stop after this one.
>>
>> /BAH
>
> No, please, I have been enjoying it.


As have I.

>
> comp.arch is about generic "is this a good idea".


There are a couple of people in c.a who do not like my posts.  Since
they do useful work, I try not to irritate them and don't post to c.a.

>
> alt.folklore.computers is about "what was done on such and such a machine".


Not really.  Most of us are used to taking what exists, or existed,
and creating new things.  a.f.c.'s discussions range from food to
politics to religions to blacksmithing and we usually manage to
tie the topic back to the computing biz.  Even when the conversation
strays far off-topic, it sounds like I'm attending the bullshit and
design sessions we used to have when creating the "new" stuff.

>
> There is a lot of overlap.
>
> comp.arcj is not really interested in the grotty details of which
> version of MVS had which feature.  But is interested in the features.

I understand that.  I figured that, if anyone was interested in what
I talkked about, they would buzz over to a.f.c or the PDP-10 newsgroup.

> I thought that you might be pulling my leg because I am often accused of
> pushing for CISCy instructions - and you were pushing my comfort zone.


<snort>  I don't consider our byte instructions CISCy.  My opinion,
which has to be taken as an uneducated opinion in c.a, is that
the PDP-10 had the RISC philosophy underneath.  All the instructions
could be documented on a 5"x7" card.  The formula used for creating
the proper name of each instruction was common to most of the
machine instructions.  Looking for an instruction to do x was
very easy and didn't require 100s pages of a manual to find it.

> If you were serious:
>
>
> What applications made you want these features?

The monitor (which in your terms is now called the kernal).
Our linker, called LINK, used ASCII, SIXBIT, EBCDIC, and
something else to its job.  "Foreign" data could be in
all kinds of formats.  Anything that needed to use bytes
of any size would use the byte instructions.  If you wanted
to move a block of data, you did a BLT (block transfer)
instruction instead of moving a byte a time.  I could edit
any data with a program called FILDDT.  Can't do that these
days.

/BAH

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Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2011-09-01 13:39 +0000
  Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-09-01 08:18 -0700
    Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2011-09-02 13:44 +0000
      Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! "Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> - 2011-09-02 09:37 -0700
        Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2011-09-02 10:21 -0700
          Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) - 2011-09-05 06:11 -0500
        Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2011-09-03 14:57 +0000
          Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> - 2011-09-03 13:13 -0400
            Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) - 2011-09-05 06:41 -0500
              Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> - 2011-09-05 08:21 -0400
              Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2011-09-05 13:26 +0000
            Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2011-09-05 22:48 -0700
              Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2011-09-06 16:51 -0700
                Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Morten Reistad <first@last.name> - 2011-09-07 14:14 +0200
                Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2011-09-07 09:45 -0700
                Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Rob Doyle <radioengr@gmail.com> - 2011-09-07 18:54 -0700
                Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2011-09-08 00:53 -0700
                Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem! MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> - 2011-09-08 08:00 -0700

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