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