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.

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.

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.

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