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Live Q&A - Mysteries of the Ancients: Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD)
Clive "Max" Maxfield - Watch Now - EOC 2023 - Duration: 24:28
Hi Michael -- thanks for the kind words -- a lot of the early micros had different ways of handling BCD -- as you say, some had a DAA instruction, others actually offered BCD addition and subtraction operations, and some just gave a soft of half (nybble) carry flag you could use to sort things out yourself.
For some reason, two's complement has always baffled me. I get it now.
My work here is done LOL
10:34:40 From Max Maxfield : Hi everyone :-) 10:37:31 From Bob Fish : Audio is fine, video stuck in the pipe i.e. none!? 10:37:58 From Matt Burkett : Video is fine for me too 10:38:03 From Thomas Schaertel : Video and audio is fine here too. 10:39:42 From Bob Fish : Cleared blockage ! Qu.) Binary Coded 'something else'? 10:42:29 From Ross K. : Hi Max! You alluded to a difference in borrowing (subtraction) between the US and England in the talk. Could you elaborate? 10:45:00 From Michael Kirkhart : https://rounding.to/understanding-the-bankers-rounding/ 10:46:16 From Max Maxfield : https://www.clivemaxfield.com/diycalculator/popup-m-round.shtml 10:46:37 From Bob Fish : These slides are very well prepared ... thinking of doing a set for f.p (floating point) ... for next year? 10:50:08 From Michael Kirkhart : Are we? Have you watched a clerk try to make change if they fail to enter the cash you have given them in their cash register? 10:51:08 From Max Maxfield : https://www.clivemaxfield.com/coolbeans/is-this-the-worst-programming-language-ever/ 10:52:36 From Max Maxfield : ++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++ ..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+. 10:54:06 From Bob Fish : Re: Floating-point - May be when we grasp full Quantum processing, fractional bits won't be the problem explaining why even the IEEE continues to strive for standards improvements re. f.p 10:55:36 From Al Anway : I have Chuck Moore's ColorForth on my todo list to explore. 10:56:47 From Nick Moore : Whoa, I need to check that out.
Excellent talk on a subject I have dealt with in the past, but not with the same level of detail.
I remember working with an Intel 8042 microcontroller, and saw one of the instructions was DAA, or "decimal adjust accumulator after addition". It was meant to allow the programmer to add 2 packed BCD values using the regular binary ADD instruction, and then correct the result. Here is a WWW link describing this same instruction in the x86 instruction set:
https://www.righto.com/2023/01/understanding-x86s-decimal-adjust-after.html