29 Sep
2026
29 Sep
'26
7:29 p.m.
I helped on two 2901 projects, A parallel interpolator on a CNC
controller and a Graphics engine at Metheus. Bitsavers has the docs,
CO Josh.
On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 6:45 PM Jon Elson via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 9/29/26 12:36, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
Anything with the bit slice 2901 or 2903 chips from AMD had
the capability to do hardware binary and packed decimal
operations. Of course, the microcode would need to have
implemented those.
Jon
On Sep 29, 2026, at 1:22 PM, ben via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
... Like what machines other than IBM had binary and decimal computing?
That
depends. One answer is "all of them" -- because any general purpose computer
can do both.
If you meant "had machine instructions both for decimal and for binary
arithmetic", the answer includes the PDP-11 and VAX, and I think the Intel 4004 had
instructions used as building blocks in decimal arithmetic.