Nik Clayton wrote:

> I'm considering buying the Empeg in-car MP3 player (http://www.empeg.com/).
> 
> The technical info at http://www.empeg.com/tech.html says that the unit
> uses a 220MHz StrongARM S-1100-DA.  The NetBSD ARM page says that NetBSD
> is compatible with the ARM processor, which is great.  I just wanted to
> double check that it's compatible with this particular ARM processor.

I'm sure Mark Brinicombe can comment on whether that particular cpu
variant is supported. Additional code would be needed anyway to support
whatever glue logic is present in the Empeg.

However, there is no COMPAT_LINUX for the ARM architecture so Empeg's
MP3 decoder software, et al, won't run under NetBSD. You also can't just
use something like "mpegplay" from the Ports/Packages collection either
as they depend on fast floating point. Since the StrongARM has no
hardware
floating point, performance will suck big time. There are several
fixed point MP3 implementations knocking around, but I haven't seem
them in source form. (I assume Empeg's MP3 algorithm is fixed point).

Still, NetBSD on the Empeg would be cool! ;-)

Cheers, Steve