IEEE 754 floats

[Dale Huffman]

Is there a simple way to convert an IEEE-754 floating point ascii
string ( "0x40400000" = 3.0, 32bit ) into a float variable, without
writing a function to do the math.  I have transferred this across a
network from a device I have no contol over and it sends all data as a
string.  Everything I have tried just converts from hex to decimal and
adds a decimal point and a zero.

string.atof("0x40400000")  returns 1077936128.0

In case I'm not explaining clearly, what I'm looking for could be
coded in C as follows:

int     a = 0x40400000;
float *ap = (float *)&a;	

float myFloat = *ap;

Sorry if the C offeded anyone in the Py crowd but I'm new to Python
and so far it rocks - I just don't have the basics down yet.