Subject: Re: More Math Coprocessor Emulation Questions
To: None <port-i386@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Thomas Graichen <graichen@omega.physik.fu-berlin.de>
List: port-i386
Date: 03/16/1996 11:15:41
Daniel P Kamalic (pocky@MIT.EDU) wrote:
: I understand that the worst is true and that you're probably right,
: but I find it hard to believe that the reason why none of these programs can
: work on an SX machine is because of bad math-emul opcode. I have a nice,
: upgradable motherboard, and I was intending to upgrade my processor before
: I bought a math chip. Should I try Linux, or will I find the same problem?
you may also try out FreeBSD which has the same math emulator as linux (which
is GPL'ed and thus i think not part of NetBSD) and can run linux maple i think
- or if you like some hacking maybe you may try to fold the FreeBSD mathemu
code into NetBSD - maybe it's not so much work - just some ideas
t
p.s.: the problem is - as mentioned elsethere here - that the NetBSD
mathemulator (like the non GPL'ed FreeBSD one) doesn't understand all of the
fpu instructions - this problem is avoided by a change to the Net/FreeBSD
compiler to not generate these instructions - thus all Net/FreeBSD binaries
should work - but if you have a linux binary you are running emulated it was
compiled with the linux gcc which produces the instructions the math emulator
can't handle - the linux/FreeBSD (GPL'ed) mathemulator is as far as i know a
very good and fully implementation of the 387/487
--
thomas graichen graichen@mail.physik.fu-berlin.de graichen@FreeBSD.org
perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when
there is no longer anything to take away antoine de saint-exupery