On Tue, 16 Dec 1997, Adam Glass wrote:

> I think doing a pure port to an HPC platform would be fairly difficult, but
> there are other solutions that may get you to your desired goal.
> 
> The problems with a purely native NetBSD port will be getting around the OS
> in ROM and dealing with the total lack of publicly available hardware
> documentation for the platform.  The former is probably surmountable by
> using the ROM patching mechanism and a pseudo-boot loader.  The lack of
> hardware docs is likely to be fatal though.  BTW: There were no HPC
> reference designs so each HPC is distinctly different from another.

The SH3 assembeler guide is prettry descriptive as far as an assembler 
guide goes. I'm more concerned about the display/keyboard. I don't see 
why the PCMCIA/serial stuff wouldn't be standard. (mind you, I haven't 
actually looked.) 

If it's not packed with ASICs it can probably be figured out. By todays 
standard the HPC hardware appears to be clean and simple. 

I'm not sure if any vendors would disclose design docs. Do vendors do 
this when asked? I'm sure casio would stonewall, but someone like HP might..


> 
> A second option would be to port NetBSD to Win32 so that it runs as a
> process (or series of processes) under Win32.  This solution (done properly)
> should work on NT, Win95, and WinCE.  You can then run your NetBSD
> applications inside this environment.

This occured to me as well. It would probably be the wisest. I'm 
wondering if the Linux people haven't done this. Also Mach 3.x with BSD 
on top would be quite "easy" to do this with. (If I'm correctly remembering 
how it works)

I've also been thinking about a port to some sort of generic VM interface, 
that's written in ANSI C. This may be a good time for it.

> 
> Your third option and I think the one that is most achievable is to port the
> tools you want (perl, python) to WinCE.  Since these tools (at least perl)
> are available for Win95/NT in source form, it should be fairly easy to port
> them to the Win32 subset implemented by WinCE.  In fact, you should probably
> look around to see if someone has done it for you.  This solution lets you
> use the tools you want without expending a huge amount of energy to get
> there.

Already been at it. The tools I really want are home grown shell scripts, 
without pipes and special files they're useless. A pseudo POSIX support 
package would be a good idea for CE..

	-Paul

 > 
> later,
> Adam Glass
> adamg@microsoft.com & former NetBSD hacker
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Paul Evans [SMTP:paule@shadowfax.martex.gen.oh.us]
> > Sent:	Monday, December 15, 1997 10:44 PM
> > To:	tech-kern@netbsd.org
> > Subject:	HPC port?
> > 
> > 
> > Has anyone (is anyone) investigating the feasibilty of a NetBSD port to 
> > the Handheld Windows CE computers?
> > 
> > I would have thought they would be too small in terms of mass storage. 
> > But, with a FLASH card, I don't see why it's not possible.
> > 
> > My primary intrest in this is related to troubles writing "real world" 
> > applicatifons. Mainly, writing simple things to use the HPC for 
> > instrementation.
> > 
> > The reason I think NetBSD would be a viable option is centered around 
> > this problem, I don't want to have to use the windows enviroment. I'd 
> > rather use perl/python, etc. AFAIK NetBSD/i386 pcmcia could be used for 
> > this, making general archetecture, CPU, and console support the primary 
> > issues. (as well as a C compiler-- I think)
> > 
> > So, does anyone have any thoughts?
> > 
> > thanks.
> > 
> > --
> > 	Paul Evans  
> > 	paule@martex.gen.oh.us _ pevans@cleindians.com
> 
--
	Paul Evans  
	paule@martex.gen.oh.us _ pevans@cleindians.com