>>>>> "David" == David Gilbert <dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca> writes:

David> 	This all reminded me that I wanted to ask if anyone thought it
David> would be possible to port NetBSD to a 68010-based architecture.
David> I have access to a few copies of a 'Sylogics' computer.  They
David> have a 68010, 4 serial ports, some form of early array
David> processor (some sort of DSP?), 16 meg of memory, an ethernet
David> board and an ST-506 disk controller.

David> 	When they were sold, they were sold with some form of UN*X.
David> Some of this, I'm guessing at, but most of the guesses seem
David> reasonable.

David> 	However, I don't know if the 68010 has the abilities that
David> NetBSD needs in a chip --- I know that the 68000 doesn't.  I
David> also don't have a lot of documentation on the machines ---
David> besides the fact that all the chips seem rather stock (16450
David> serial chips, for instance).

Well the '010 does not have a MMU, but several vendors added custom
MMU HW, do you think Sylogics might have done that too?  And then you
just need to understand hat MMU :-)  The '010 had restartable
instructions as oppposed to the 68000 so it was easier to make
MMU-requiring OSes work for that CPU.  Mind you it is *not* impossible
to port NetBSD to a straight 68000, you just need two of them running
slightly out of sync, so when a trap occurs the other CPU can be used
to restart the failing instruction.  Cute, eh :-)  Yes, there existed
such machines, I think Apollo did one, possibly Sun too..

Now an Apple ][ port would be harder I guess :-)

Niklas