> The first to give me problems was vMac 0.1.9 (Mac Plus emulator).  It
> would only run after I defined the word order to be "Little Endian",
> despite a comment in the config file which implied that a Sparc was
> "Big Endian".

> OTOH, the autoconf script which comes with Bochs (PC emulator)
> stubbornly insists that it has determined my system to be, in fact,
> "Big Endian".

> So, which is it?  I seem to dimly recall that a Sparc processor can
> be run as either, but, if so, which way does NetBSD use it?

As far as I know your dim recollection is incorrect, and SPARCs are
always big-endian.  The MIPS processor may be what you're thinking of;
that I do believe can be run either way (though I don't know if any
hardware exists that can switch from software).

I have no idea why vMac didn't work when you configured it big-endian.

> On a similar note, do I need to be concerned about alignment of
> structures?

Maybe.  On the SPARC, basically everything needs to be aligned on a
"natural" boundary (ie, every primitive should be aligned to a multiple
of its size).  The compiler normally takes care of this, but if the
code starts playing games with pointer arithmetic it can break.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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