RE: Exponential

["Richard Jackson" <richardjackson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comment from the "old fart" gallery -- The 360 et al were also designed from
the ground up as business machines.  ZAP (zero and add packed) has been a
machine instruction on those systems since about 1960.  It is a small matter
of microprogramming.  Most general purpose computers from the 50s onwards
until the inception of PCs and the minicomputers (that later became Unix
systems) had decimal arithmetic.  It was the original RISC project (the
so-called "room 801" project) that lost decimal arithmetic and character
string copy instructions for RISC systems.  Those instructions were
perceived as too expensive to put onto the first microcomputer chips and not
necessary for the early minicomputers from Digital, HP, Data General, etc.

Richard Jackson
mailto:richardjackson@richardjackson.net
www.richardjacksonltd.com
Voice: 1 (303) 808-8058
Fax:   1 (303) 663-4325

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com [mailto:owner-rpg400-l@midrange.com]On
Behalf Of jpcarr@TREDEGAR.COM
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 12:46 PM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Exponential



>The AS/400 is the only platform that I know of where the system itself can
>do math without doing it in either integer or floating point logic.
>Somehow, the AS/400 does packed as well.  (Which is very useful, but
>bizarre..)

I think this an example of the crux of the "Extreme Business Machine" ads.
The idea that the AS/400(only?)  was designed from inception to be a
Business computer.




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