From owner-freebsd-current Mon Jul 12 14: 6:37 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from hooked.net (pm3-12.ppp.wenet.net [206.15.85.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 499B21511A; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 14:06:29 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from garbanzo@hooked.net) Received: from localhost (garbanzo@localhost) by zippy.dyn.ml.org (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA41664; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 13:44:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from garbanzo@hooked.net) X-Authentication-Warning: zippy.dyn.ml.org: garbanzo owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 13:44:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Alex Zepeda To: "Brian F. Feldman" Cc: Garrett Wollman , Martin Cracauer , freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Using float emulator on a system with FPU? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Brian F. Feldman wrote: > Why shouldn't we? Noone uses machines without FPUs anymore. What > non-ancient CPU doesn't have an FPU? And we're talking about the i386 > family here... I've noticed recently, more and more, Linux is moving into the embedded market quite nicely, and being used on smaller and smaller systems. FreeBSD OTOH has been focusing (albeit not too successfully) on the higher end market. With my recent addition of an 040 powered Mac that I plan to put NetBSD on, this really irks me. I'd love to put some (read: a significant) amount of time getting FreeBSD up and running on this, but there seems to be a lot of resistance to using FreeBSD on smaller/older machines. It almost seems like the requirement is Pentium III, Alpha or bust. And yes, this machine does have an FPU, but there are plenty of *newer* systems without FPUs For instance, doesn't the StrongArm lack an FPU? What about embedded systems? A 486SX would draw a whole lot less power than a Pentium. And it's certainly not like emulating an FPU is an impossible task like say on some LC040s... - alex To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message