27 Sep
2004
27 Sep
'04
5:12 a.m.
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:40:20 -0400, Jim Donoghue <jim(a)smithy.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 22:08, William Donzelli wrote:
I've always wondered what systems/processors (other than IBM mainframes)
that had hardware decimal arithmetic support. I don't mean 'decimal
adjust' instructions, I'm talking about full
add/subtract/multiply/divide/etc. The only other one I know of is the
Wang VS, which came standard with support for 'packed decimal' data, and
even floating-point decimal. The Wang VS instruction set was very
similar to the IBM 360/370, even the packed decimal data format was the
same.
If I remember right, the NCR315 had full BCD arithmetic. At least the
arithmetic instructions it had were decimal, I do not remember if it
actually had a divide instruction in hardware.
It was even so decimal-oriented that memory was addressed in decimal.
A rather nice feature was that all internal registers were ferrite core.
If it stopped because of a power falure, it could be restarted in the
exact instruction step where it had stopped.
When I was working for NCR Norway in the early 70's, the bulk of input to
the 315 came from OCR - reading cash register rolls printed in National
Optical Font. Not bad for a cumputer which was shipping earlier than the
IBM 360.
We also had dial-up data transfer over modem from England, but that seemed
a bit trivial when Norway was connected to ARPANET the year after. That,
however, is a totally different story.
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
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.