Hi,

David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org> wrote:
> 	There still seems to be quite a few machines with broken LC040s
> 	out there, particularly laptops which are hard to upgrade. In
> 	order to support those machines the options are:
> 
> 	a) Tell them to replace the CPU or throw the machine away.
> 	   A little harsh, particularly as NetBSD runs on the sun2
> 	   which is a 68010 cpu...

Ah, but I *like* my powerbook 540.  I'd would be nice
to have a full 040, and sonnet made one for a while.  No
more though...

> 
> 	b) Change the m68k distribution to be compiled -msoft-float
> 	   Not something that will appeal to everone with real FPUs.

Very true.
> 
> 	c) Change the m68k distribution to be be conditionally soft-float,
> 	   possibly in a similar way to how i386 has a machdep.fpu_present
> 	   sysctl check in ld.so.conf to pick up libm387.so.0
> 	   ahead of libm.so.0. This would still require /rescue to be
> 	   compiled -msoft-float, plus all floating point to be indirected
> 	   through a library. Smething of a mess

You need libc as well.  printf and family are a big problem with
the fpu emulation.  This would be a mess.

> 
> 	d) Provide an complete alternative m68k-softfloat distribution.
> 	   Bruce O'Neel has done this - would it make sense to pull this
> 	   into the main tree and produce an an alternate distribution
> 	   with the standard NetBSD release? As a bonus non-broken LC040
> 	   and LC060 users would be able to use this for a small performance
> 	   gain. The question would be whether to compile it
> 	   '-m68040-60 -soft-float' or just '-soft-float' :)

I am working (very slowly) to do this.  One catch is that the changes
I made were in the m68k, not the mac68k, code, so more parties
have to agree.

Thanks!

cheers

bruce