Neil Russell says on comp.os.linux:
> * I have decided that the IDT 79R3051E (the non FPU version) should be
> used. Since getting good pricing is hard unless quantities are high
> I wish to stick to one type of CPU. The board will be able to
> accommodate the IDT 79R3081E (with the FPU and more cache) if the
> user wishes to replace the CPU. This would mean that full floating
> point support routines need to be written; ho-hum.
I suspect the existing FPU emulator can form the core of a IEEE
FPU emulator. The hard part would be replacing the 387 front end
with a mips one, assuming that the mips compiler uses a similar
subset of IEEE FPU as the 386 one. Since they are both gcc, this
is probably the case. Another guess: Mips FPU instructions are
not going to be as hard to interpret as 387 ones.
> * The R3000 is able to be a little endian or a big endian machine.
> Most operating systems that I've seen use the big endian mode, but
> since linux runs on the 386, little endian may be more appropriate.
I don't know if it will make that much difference, but I suppose
little-endian is easiest. Big endian will probably make talking to
ISA IO boards quite tricky.
What's your current thoughts on on-board IO?
J
|