moyer@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Eric Moyer) (11/27/90)
I was looking at mathmatica in a software catologue and it says it comes
in an SE/plus and a mac II version which supports a math coprocessor.
This led me to wonder, has someone written a software package that traps
all floating point operations to software routines? I KNOW that this
question seems stupid at first, since most systems do the FP in software
by DEFAULT. and you have to remap the traps to fire up the coprocessor. But
the thing is - I have seen a "coprocessor not installed" message on my si
during a few unexplained system crashes (usually running outdated PD software
which wasn't written very well). I didn't think that there were any programs
which were DEPENDANT on the coprocessor, since I assumed that adding one was
just a matter of setting up the new traps. What gives?
1 Are there packages which will NOT run without the coprocessor? Why?
2 Does the mathmatica version for the Model II depend on a coprocessor?
3 Can anything be done (if coprocessor dependent progs exist) to trap
coprocessor operations to software?