mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin) (05/17/88)
> > >massage them, since there are no negative photons (unlike negative addresses). > > What do you care if you are counting in a signed integer, and just > > use half the range? > > Unfortunatly I have found no simple way to get the star to cooperate with > respect to counting rates. Sometimes 16 bits are enough, sometimes 32 That does bring up a point. What's needed there is big numbers. Unsigned arithmetic lets you get one more bit, doubling your range. After that, you go to multi-word (multi-accumulator-width) counters. Pronounced "bignum", with a lisp. In the usual case, the sign appears only in the MSW and applies to all. I expect that unsigned arithmetic makes this easier, but I'm not sure. Does it? In any event, no machine that I know of (well, maybe an old Honeywell) does multiword addressing.