On Feb 19, 12:44pm, Stephen Champion wrote:
> > > Who's working on making NetBSD run on 68060? Who's going to?
> > 
> > 	And who's going to buy them the Trans-Warp(s) :^)
...
> 	The person(s) that do '060 support will be the first to have a 
> meeting of several necessary prerequisites.  They need the expertise, the 
> '060 board, the time, and the desire.  Since '060 boards have barely hit 
> the market yet, it's virtually impossible to say who will do it - that 
> person probably doesn't even know it yet, even if he has the time, 
> expertise, and desire.

  I probably have the expertise (after doing the 68040 - being the only
way I could get NetBSD on my system) and certainly the desire.  Time
might be be something else though.  There are several things I've done
in NetBSD that I need to do some more work on.

  I haven't bothered learning anything about the '060 yet, as I haven't
had any need to.  I doubt it would be all that difficult (for me at
least).

  Anybody want to provide me with a board? :-) :-)  [I've spent enough
on '040 boards, A4000's, and disks already - I don't have any plans on
buying a '060 board any time soon.]

> 	However there are a few problems that may make this one takea 
> while longer than some would like.  From the little I've heard, the '060 
> is not fully register and instruction compatible with any of the previous 
> M680x0's.  All portions of the OS that are done in assembly need to be 
> looked at and checked for '060 compatibility.  The parts done in C would 
> be easy except for one thing - GCC 2.4.5 doesn't support the '060.  
> Consequently, an '060 NetBSD would need to run with newer versions of 
> GAS, GCC, libgcc, libg++, and probably other utilities as well.  I'm not 
> sure that even GCC 2.6.3 supports the '060, so this could be a problem.  
> This should involve a compiler upgrade for all of NetBSD, to retain 
> full compatibility.

  I don't think the compiler or assembler is much of an issue - assuming
that the '060 is upward compatible to the '020/'030 for user mode
instructions.  Dealing with '060-specific kernel mode instructions
shouldn't be much different that doing the '040-specific instructions. 
The current kernel doesn't even require that gcc/gas be able to handle
the '040 (the kernel is only compiled with -mc68020).  All the
'040-specific instructions are coded as data.

Michael

-- 
Michael L. Hitch			INTERNET:  osymh@montana.edu
Computer Consultant
Office of Systems and Computing Services
Montana State University	Bozeman, MT	USA