IEEE arithmetic in C

[Tom Neff]

Actually I'm a little disappointed that vendors (even Intel's own
iC86/286) don't appear to support the IEEE 80-bit real format (a la PL/M
TEMPREAL or assembler 'DT 1.2E+34').  You pick these processors, read
all the lavish documentation talking about their special features, then
they don't let you at them.  I understand how everything has to be
dumbed down and have happy faces painted on it for the glorious new
future of standardization, but sometimes in the trenches I wish these
things were still designed by dweebs so that ugly, dweebish, necessary
jobs were easier to do.