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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:57:00 -0500
From: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG>
To: Heikki Suonsivu <hsu@wlansystems.com>
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Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: FreeBSD on non-fpu device
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On Sun, Jan 20, 2008, Heikki Suonsivu wrote:
> There is very low cost microscopic PC (see eBOX 2300 and eBOX 2300SX 
> www.compactpc.com.tw), which previously run FreeBSD fine, being based on 
>  Vortex86 cpu on Sis SoC chip 550.  Unfortunately the manufacturer 
> switched to a new SoC cpu which is 486SX derivative without FPU.  This 
> does not work with FreeBSD.

On the userland side, you need to edit src/libc/Makefile to
include softfloat/Makefile.inc (as we do for the arm platform).
Then compile everything including libm with -msoft-float.

However, at least on i386, there's no support in the kernel for
that kind of configuration, as of 5.0 or so. The kernel doesn't
actually *use* floating point, so the changes are probably not
that drastic, but we dropped support for the !FPU case on i386 a
long time ago, and it would take a bit of effort to make it work.
You might find it easier to use an older release instead.