routine to translate DEC microvax Floating point...

[Richard French <rfrench(at)wellesley.edu>]

Hi, friends -
    I have some 20-year old data in binary floating point format (DEC
microvax
running ULTRIX4.4). Unfortunately, that ancient machine, while still
running, can
no longer connect to the internet, so my old subterfuge of converting
the floating
point to ascii on the microvax, piping across the network to my Alpha
machine,
and then reconverting it to binary no longer works. I do have the binary
files on
my new machine, but I don't know how the bits are packed for DEC
microvax
floating point format, and my web prowls have not revealed the answer.
    I'm hoping that some of you may know how to decode floating point
(and possibly also double precision) from DEC microvax format to IEEE. I

think I recall seeing some IDL utilties to do this once, but I have not
been able
to track them down.
    Thanks very much for any and all leads!
Dick French
Astronomy Dept.
Wellesley College