[Coco] printing out floating point numbers...(only peripherally related to coco)

[jdaggett at gate.net]

Robert 

It is optional for compilers and assemblers to handle more than 80 
binary digits in double extended precission mode. Yes double 
extended can have up to 255 bits in the mantissa, yet I don't know 
of any 8 bit compiler that will h andle even double extended 
precision. The need is so remote. 

I  have no knowledge of Mandlebrot printing.  But I agree that 32 
byte floating point numbers would take a very very long time on a 
Coco att 2 MHz.. FP division of double precision at and E clock of 2 
MHz would take in the neighborhood of 10 mS to do. Double 
precission is an eight byte floating point number. I guess that if one 
is not concerned with how fast the results are obtained then one 
could do such floating point math on a 6809. 

james

On 13 Jul 2006 at 9:42, Robert Gault wrote:

> There is one application I can think of that might require such high 
> precision in a narrow range, Mandelbrot plotting. But if that is what 
> was intended, floating point numbers would be very very slow. What one 
> needs is some type of scaled integer math so that the ml program stays 
> as fast as possible.
> 
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