Subject: Naive questions
To: 'port-sparc@NetBSD.org' <port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Ruschmeyer, John <jruschme@att.com>
List: port-sparc
Date: 03/02/1998 12:06:35
Please excuse me, in advance, for what are probably a couple of naive
questions.

I recently installed NetBSD/Sparc 1.3 on my Sparc 2 and have been trying
to port some code over. For the most part, things have been going well
(thank heavens for the Package system), but I have run into problems
with some code which depended on the byte ordering of the system.

The first to give me problems was vMac 0.1.9 (Mac Plus emulator). It
would only run after I defined the word order to be "Little Endian",
despite a comment in the config file which implied that a Sparc was "Big
Endian".

OTOH, the autoconf script which comes with Bochs (PC emulator)
stubbornly insists that it has determined my system to be, in fact, "Big
Endian".

So, which is it? I seem to dimly recall that a Sparc processor can be
run as either, but, if so, which way does NetBSD use it?

On a similar note, do I need to be concerned about alignment of
structures? This was an option with another emulator I've tried to build
(PCEMU), but it seemed to help little, if any.

Lastly, has anyone been able to get any of the following to build on
NetBSD/Sparc:

	- Bochs
	- Willows Twin
	- Pcemu

If so, what's the trick?

Thanks in advance... 
<<<John>>>