Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!sandra
From: sandra@utah-cs.UUCP (Sandra J Loosemore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: floating-point format
Message-ID: <5083@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Oct-87 20:56:19 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.5083
Posted: Tue Oct 27 20:56:19 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Oct-87 06:38:43 EST
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 9
Keywords: FFP Alcyon manual goof

While in the process of trying to find out why my Lisp cross-compiler
wouldn't handle floating point constants properly, I found a goof in
the Alcyon C V4.14 documentation.  It claims that, in the Motorola FFP
format, the exponent in bits 0..6 is stored in its two's complement
representation, but in reality it appears to be biased by 64 and stored
as an integer in the range 0..127.  Bit 7 is the sign bit and the unsigned
mantissa is in bits 8-31; there is no "hidden bit".

-Sandra