John, I understand the z/arch somewhat, I stepped out of the hardware arena many moons ago, my father was involved with hardware at Unisys. I was taught every converted down to its lowest common factor, binary..are you saying otherwise ? You comments I understand somewhat but I am a practical guy ..so help me understand here
Scott ford www.identityforge.com from my IPAD 'Infinite wisdom through infinite means' > On Dec 8, 2013, at 4:39 PM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > > The system/360 and its mainframe successors are largely binary > machines. In particular, addressing is entirely binary. They can, > however, do both decimal and hexadecimal arithmetic in some situations > too. > > All this can be reduced to boolean algebra and, finally, to assorted > configurations of NORs or NANDs: binary arithmetic can indeed be made > to disappear, replaced by boolean algebra. These reductions are > theoretically important; but, as I have had occasion to point out here > before, you can cut yourself with Ockham's razor. > > In most cases it is appropriate, qua programmer although not perhaps > qua circuit designer, to think of the z/Architecture HFP instructions > as doing hexadecimal arithmetic and of the decimal and DFP > instructions as doing decimal arithmetic > > John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
