Subject: (Broken) LC040 & alternative distribution
To: NetBSD Port <port-mac68k@netbsd.org>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 06/30/2003 16:42:36
	There still seems to be quite a few machines with broken LC040s
	out there, particularly laptops which are hard to upgrade. In
	order to support those machines the options are:

	a) Tell them to replace the CPU or throw the machine away.
	   A little harsh, particularly as NetBSD runs on the sun2
	   which is a 68010 cpu...

	b) Change the m68k distribution to be compiled -msoft-float
	   Not something that will appeal to everone with real FPUs.

	c) Change the m68k distribution to be be conditionally soft-float,
	   possibly in a similar way to how i386 has a machdep.fpu_present
	   sysctl check in ld.so.conf to pick up libm387.so.0
	   ahead of libm.so.0. This would still require /rescue to be
	   compiled -msoft-float, plus all floating point to be indirected
	   through a library. Smething of a mess

	d) Provide an complete alternative m68k-softfloat distribution.
	   Bruce O'Neel has done this - would it make sense to pull this
	   into the main tree and produce an an alternate distribution
	   with the standard NetBSD release? As a bonus non-broken LC040
	   and LC060 users would be able to use this for a small performance
	   gain. The question would be whether to compile it
	   '-m68040-60 -soft-float' or just '-soft-float' :)

-- 
		David/absolute          -- www.netbsd.org: No hype required --