Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Reading your comments about two's complement representation reminded me that the first computers I ever worked with (military Univacs) all used one's complement math. There was special circuitry to detect a value of all 1s and convert it to all 0s. I've forgotten exactly where this circuitry was (accumulator? ALU?), but I do remember software bugs being introduced from that automatic conversion when non-numeric values were represented.
My first encounter with two's complement representation was the Intel 8008, and because all my prior experience was with one's complement math, it took me a little while to be convinced that two's complement math actually worked!
Mar 15, 2023, 3:50:05 PM
Posted to Reverse-engineering the multiplication algorithm in the Intel 8086 processor