On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Ben Harris wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Dec 21, 2000 at 11:16:01PM -0800, Chuck Silvers wrote:
> > > userland binaries should be in the same "port".  (that still leaves the
> > > question of chips like the MIPS that can run both big- and little-endian,
> > > but let's leave that aside for the moment.)
> > 
> > Maybe I misread your intent, but to me your exact words imply that there
> > will never be a big endian arm port.
> > 
> > I don't know if I'm repeating something already known here, but there
> > is already a big endian arm linux port for the Intel IXP1200
> 
> Hmm.  I was wondering whether there had ever been any machines that used
> the big-endian ARMs.

Yes, there is one. IIRC the Newton MessagePad series from Apple uses the
ARM610 processor in big-endian mode.

Maybe also the eMate, but I cannot tell for sure.

The fact that Apple Computers were to use the ARM processor, was the
primary reason why the ARM6xx processors were made with both big-endian
and little-endian support. Acorn needed to continue with little-endian,
whereas Apple needed big-endian since all the Macs were big-endian.

This, of course, raises the issue of whether it would be possible to port
NetBSD to the Newton MessagePad and eMate computers.

Kjetil B.
mailto:kjetil@thomassen.priv.no
http://www.thomassen.priv.no/