Subject: Re: How many pc532 still running ...
To: Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com>
From: David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
List: port-pc532
Date: 12/17/2001 17:50:03
On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Phil Budne wrote:

> David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org> wrote;
>
> > 	The reason the broken ns32k support in recent gcc is a
> > 	problem is that NetBSD is moving to a much more recent
> > 	toolchain, to (among other reasons) easily enable cross
> > 	compilation of a complete NetBSD distribution for any target
> > 	from any posix compatible system with an ANSI C compiler.
>
> The ability to cross compile for the pc532 (even if only from
> NetBSD/ix86) could be a real life extender (who after all, wants to
> wait 24 hours for a make world that could run in under an hour on a
> modern system, just to have it fail on some small item near the end)!
>
	Amen (I've used it for slow sparc boxes, and have native
	compiled on uVaxIIs :)

> In my mind, the ability to do cross compilation, if nothing else,
> could be a reasonable motive for moving to 1.6. HOWEVER, if anything
> has become so bloated that 8MB machines are untennable, I'd have to
> reconsider.

	arm26 is in the process of moving from a 8MB minimum to
	4MB, maybe even for 1.6, though Ben would be the one to
	say. Virtually all arm26 boxes maxed out at 4MB without
	expensive 2rd party upgrades.

	With a 32K hardware pagesize and risc code (though more
	compact than most risc), 4MB really doesn't go very far.

	I believe there is a reasonable group of people to whom
	low memory machines remain an interesting objective, so
	I'd like to think that 8MB on an ns32k shouldn't be a
	problem for the forseable future :)

-- 
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