Hi,
On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 09:40:14AM -0400, Joey C wrote:
> On Sunday 18 April 2004 9:44 pm, you wrote:
> > Why SoftFPU? Does it help the installer or something?
> 
> NetBSD requires that your computer has an FPU.  LCIIIs don't have FPUs in 
> them, so you could either buy one somewhere or get a FPU emulator.  I chose 
> to get SoftFPU for now and maybe later get a real FPU.  SoftFPU just emulates 
> a FPU so you can run NetBSD.  There are a few other FPU emulators out there, 
> but I can't seem to remember their names.  If you have a FPU already 
> installed, you don't need an emulator, but if you don't, you need to either 
> buy one or download an emulator.

I'm not sure that's quite it.

The NetBSD boot process does not require a FPU.  OTOH, the OpenBSD
will not let you run their boot program without a FPU.  Once the
NetBSD copyright message starts across your screen MacOS is gone, and
therefore, SoftFPU is also gone.

030 and 020 systems are supposed to work without a FPU, though there
have been reports that 1.6+ breaks this is some way.  There is a
builtin FPU emulater which shows up as

fpu0 at mainbus0 (emulator)

in my case.  LC040 systems can't have FPUs and 1.5.3, at least, would
boot and run badly.

I've built NetBSD 1.6.x and 2.0 beta for Non FPU macs on
ftp://lain.ziaspace.com/pub/NetBSD/m68k/ which seems to work ok on
systems without FPUs.

Thanks!

cheers

bruce
-- 
edoneel@sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org