9 ms·
I have written two floating point packages, both before 1975. The first was for the IBM 1401 (really!). iirc, it had a 2 or 3 digit exponent and 10 or more dig
by mjcohen 12y ago
I have written two floating point packages, both before 1975.
The first was for the IBM 1401 (really!). iirc, it had a 2 or 3 digit exponent and 10 or more digit mantissa. It was just for fun, and never used for anything.
The second was for a Varian minicomputer. It was intended for an application that needed to solve a 19 x 19 system of linear equations. Since the Varian was a 16-bit machine, I used a format of 1 word (16 bits) exponent and 2 word (32 bits) mantissa. It was fun, it worked, and I was paid to do it. What more could anyone ask?
- zorked 12y agoThat's very interesting. Why not write about those experiences? By the way, though I know what an IBM 1401 is, I had never heard of Varian and even their Wikipedia page is only like two paragraphs long. The Internet needs more information...
- EvanAnderson 12y agoI'd heard of Varian but didn't know much about them. It turns out that Bitsavers has some Varian-related docs: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/varian/ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/varian/