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From: hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: 360 floating point range
Message-ID: <1799@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 08:29:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1799
Posted: Wed Jul 31 08:29:09 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 05:49:42 EDT
Organization: NC State Univ.
Lines: 10

>Finally all of the 360's float formats have the same number
>of exponent bits, so they all have a dynamic range of 10^+/-75.
>I can't fault them for that as much as for the other stuff, since
>at the time the standard dynamic range for floats was only half that.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Assuming that the standard was the IBM 7090 family, that's correct.
The IBM 650, IBM 1620 and (I think) IBM 1401/1410 family, all used
an exponent range of +/- 99, and the CDC 1604 had an exponent range
of +/- 300.
--henry schaffer