Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!DBNUAMA1.BITNET!VBRANDT
From: VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Good news for Atari MC68881 users
Message-ID: <8811021410.AA11070@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 2 Nov 88 14:11:04 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 31
X-Unparsable-Date: Wed, 02 Nov 88 15:10:07 SET


Hello all,

    I earlier asked about software support for the new Atari MC68881 floating-
point processor board (remember, this is a Mega-only add-on). Well, here's good
news:

    After a long period of silence, Atari Germany now supplies software
libraries for Alcyon C and ST PASCAL/+ (by CCD/OSS) at no extra charge. They
include source code and a demo program for both compilers. While the Alcyon
implementation is complete, the Pascal version lacks the basic arithmetic
operations (+, -, *, /, **). This is due to the internal representation of
real numbers in the compiler.

    So, if you buy the FPU add-on, you'll be able to DO something with it!
Special thanks to Atari for including the (assembler) source, this makes it
much easier to change or expand the libraries.

    I don't think it's the same software that comes with the 'SFP004 developers
kit' that Roy Good told the net about a few weeks back. At least, Atari Germany
credits a German author for the software.

    I also called CCD, the makers of ST PASCAL, and they told me that there
will be an update next year that incorporates MC68881 support. This update will
cost about DM 70.- (approx. US$ 39). The guy on the phone wasn't able to tell
me if basic arithmetic operations would be executed by the FPU in this update.

    I don't have Alcyon C, so I can't say anything about that compiler.

Bitnet:  VBRANDT@DBNUAMA1                              Volker A. Brandt
UUCP:    ...!unido!DBNUAMA1.bitnet!vbrandt             Angewandte Mathematik
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