hello david,
> With 5.9.2 and CVS maxima with clisp on cygwin I see
>
> (%i1) float(0.0b0);
> Floating point overflow in converting 0.0B0 to flonum
> -- an error. Quitting. To debug this try debugmode(true);
>
> I don't see this with 5.9.2 on windows (gcl)
a few more data --
clisp 2.34 / maxima 5.9.2cvs / linux => same error
gcl 2.6.7 / maxima 5.9.2cvs / linux => OK
fwiw
robert dodier