In message <200212030033.TAA04212@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> you write:

|> take advantage of a little application-specific knowledge to optimize
|> the multiply even further (one of the arguments can take on only
|> somewhat under 2K possible values; it's an 8-bit number shifted left by
|> a 3-bit number - and that value changes seldom, compared to how often
|> multiplies occur).

Use table look-up instead of multiply, maybe with a 256-element table
that is recalculated every time the 3-bit number changes.

	vb