I can put the below up in a NetBSD/arc homepage on www.netbsd.org
	and direct any pica references to it. Would everyone be OK with
	that?

	Hmm - would anyone have any information on the pica port's
	history? (Just so it can be made available also)

	Thanks

		David/absolute

	Then let us live and love so that people will say;
	     "The devil as well as god... is an englishman."

On Tue, 11 May 1999, Toru Nishimura wrote:
>
> I also had a plan to have NetBSD/arc WWW pages for public.  I think
> it'd be nice for people concerned with the progress.
> 
> Here is the project background which I happen to know of.
> 
> History
> 
> Noriyuki Soda (soda@netbsd.org) started OpenBSD/arc porting to NEC
> M402 as a cerntain contract job.  He and his colleague completed the
> project successfully with the complete set of X11R6 server and
> clients for it.
> 
> During the project he realized repeatedly it's necessary to have
> NetBSD/arc reflecting improvements accumlated by NetBSD project over
> years.  Since then, he made substantial efforts to make NetBSD/arc a
> realtity.
> 
> Current progress
> 
> NetBSD/arc kernel now can boot itself but dies soon.  Noriyuki Soda
> found there is a substantial issue inside NetBSD/mips pmap.c.  In
> short, NetBSD/mips can not handle well any hardwares with no L2 cache
> memory.  The symptom which he's experiencing was also observed in
> another MIPS port (NetBSD for NEC Vr4100 based Windows CEs).  He's now
> making the correct solution to improve pmap.c for L2-less hardwares.
>  
> Contact person
> 
> Noriyuki Soda (soda@netbsd.org) and Tohru Nishimura
> (nisimura@netbsd.org).  Both are willing to have ARC compliant
> hardwares donated to make the progress faster. 
> 
> Future direction
> 
> NetBSD/arc will be the first 'mips64' port to utilize R4000
> processor's potential.  ARC descentders have modern hardware
> machinaries like PCI.  There is the grewing number of MIPS processor
> Windows CE handhelds/palmtops with PC card, IrDA and LCD.  They also
> are candinates for NetBSD ports. 
> 
> --
> 
> Tohru Nishimura
> Nara Instituet
>