On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Bruce O'Neel wrote:

> > What I'd really like to get my hands on is the decimal floating-point
> > arithmetic in the revised IEEE standard.  *That's* the arithmetic you
> > want for a spreadsheet.  That's the arithmetic you want if people are
> > not to be tripped up by base 2 -vs- base 10.  In fact you *can* get
> > your hands on a software implementation if you know where to look, but
> > wouldn't it be nice to have it going at full hardware speed?


Bruce, meet HP Saturn processor.  Saturn, meet Bruce.

As in the HP41, 75, 71 etc.

OK - so "full hardware speed" was a 400kHz clock or something, with 
arithmetic being done 4 bits at a time.  IE, not very fast.

Smalltalk on the HP41.  Hmmmm.  3 sends per second?