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From: eugene@statvax.UUCP (Eugene miya)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: One more thing about Macs (useful to everyone)
Message-ID: <121@statvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Feb-84 14:41:19 EST
Article-I.D.: statvax.121
Posted: Sun Feb 12 14:41:19 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 03:47:10 EST
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 19

One thing not mentioned by any of the reviews which should have
significance is that the Mac runs the new IEEE Floating Point
standard.  (Are you reading this Stu Feldman? Richard Fateman?
Bob Kahan at UCB?)

Two of us demo'ed the calculator (It has problems).  The highest 
number we multiplied to was 1E200 before we got bored and tried:

	1/0
This is not an error, but INFinity! Similarly, 
	-1/0 
is Negative INFinity.  We did not try underflow conditions.
Regardless whether the Mac is a 16/32 bits machine, this use of the
floating point standard will have an impact on MacBasic and MacPascal.
Beware applications programmers using the Mac!

Opinion: this will be a significant machine, especially if it sells to
University students in the $1K range.  The $3K, 68K, IBM/CMU project
will be blown out of the water if it cannot top this one.