Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:45:22 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Ivan Voras" <ivoras@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: FreeBSD support this hardware? Message-ID: <BMEDLGAENEKCJFGODFOCKEHBCFAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <fq65p0$ds$1@ger.gmane.org>
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> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Ivan Voras > Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 3:30 AM > To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: FreeBSD support this hardware? >=20 >=20 > Robe wrote: >=20 > > And here's the link to the CPU page=20 > http://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/Vortex86SX/ > >=20 > > Can anybody tell me if FreeBSD support this hardware? >=20 > Judging by the "SX" label and the information on the page, no, because > it doesn't have a FPU. >=20 I'm surprised they claim Linux compatability since I thought Linux required an FPU as well. FreeBSD 4.X supports these with the kernel option MATH_EMULATE or GPL_MATH_EMULATE Later versions of FreeBSD got rid of that option. NetBSD 4 still has MATH_EMULATE but it's buggy. There was a discussion last month on the NetBSD mailing list about whether it would be a good thing to fix it. You could, possibly, recompile FreeBSD (or more likely, picobsd, see "man picobsd" for information) with the -msoft-float option to gcc to build a version that would not require a FPU. But you still need an emulator that would supply the floating point operations. gcc includes (or included) a generic implementation of these functions in dp-bit.c and fp-bit.c. Of course, it would be under the GPL. Or you could get the FreeBSD 4.11 source and dig up the ancient emulator that was under the BSD license and use that. Here's a thread fragment I found that discusses the process with regards to building libgcc=20 http://www.busybox.net/lists/uclibc/2002-May/003404.html Good luck - some things are better off left dead, the non-FPU cpus were one of these things. Ted
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