On 03/20/2017 07:45 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
Two's-complement is an amazingly great way for binary computers to store
negative numbers. It is not so great for humans to read or write.
<SNIPPAGE>
I have worked on a One's complement machine. As I recall (it has
been more than 35 years since I was programming a Univac 1100
machine) Two's complement prevents a "math/logic" error. And I
just can't remember for sure what it was. It may have been that
-0 could be a "valid" result when doing one's complement.
So, don't be so hasty to shoot down two's complement.
And in many places were I have worked on IBM and Wang VS systems,
the standards required packed decimal except for Indexes, so that
numbers could be read in a dump.
Me being an ALC programmer, didn't care because I had a trusty TI
Programmer, or the equivalent from Casio, so I could decode Fixed
point binary as well as Float.
Now, I'm going to sit back and eat some more pop-corn while you
guys argue this thing out.
But I still think the way we have been doing things is the right
way to handle it.
However, you could, if you really wanted to, ORG back over the
instruction and stick whatever it is you want in the Immediate
Byte(s). But don't forget to also code " ORG , " after you do
this just to keep from screwing the instruction counter...
Regards,
Steve Thompson
