At 10:57 AM 4/19/96 -0400, David Gilbert wrote:
>>>>>> "David" == David Jones <dej@achilles.net> writes:
>
>>> I got a Sun FPA board. What the heck is this? I noticed it had two
>>> big heatsink-like Amp parts on it. Anybody know exactly what this
>>> thing is?  How is it used? And can NetBSD be made to work with it,
>>> what is involved exactly with this?
>
>David> This is a "Floating Point Accelerator" - a "homebrew" FPU that
>David> Sun used before 68881's were commonplace.
>
>David> NetBSD probably couldn't work with this too well.  m68k
>David> binaries are currently built to assume the m68k floating-point
>David> instruction set (as implemented by 6888x and '040/'060).
>David> Software emulation is provided in some ports.  The bottom line
>David> is that you'd have to re-implement the software emulator to use
>David> the FPE, and 881's are around $40 if you can find them and work
>David> much better.
>
>	I don't know what their instruction set is, but I suspect he's
>got a 'Sky' board.  If it's the same as the one I'm thinking of, it's
>several orders-of-magnitude faster than the '881 for some of it's
>functions.
>

StunOS 4.1.1 mounts it on config as fpa0 at virtual 0xe00000... (from
memory).

The faceplate looks the same as the other Sun cards I have.

Again, where can I get info on how this card works? 

Also, does nobody know how to get a Fujitsu 9-track working?
I don't want to give a full description of the problem that isn't
NetBSD specific unless I know somebody wants to hear it.
--
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