Re: PowerBook 540c
On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 04:05:40PM -0400, Rick Genter wrote:
> Question for the lists: does it make sense to pursue a software floating
> point solution as opposed to trapping floating point instructions? My guess
> to the answer would be no, as I suspect that 99.9%+ of the code that runs in
> Linux (both in the kernel and in userland) does not use floating point, but
> if that's wrong, I'd be interested in hearing opposing viewpoints.
Fixing the handling of real FPU instructions would be better. That way
you don't crash stuff if you accidentally run a regular 68k binary on
your box. Although it's not like it kills the whole kernel anyway.
I think you're drastically underestimating where floating point shows
up in regular software. I know things like perl have a tendency to
trigger this bug. X is pretty heavy on the FPU as well. While it would
be possible to recompile everything, it takes long enough to compile
just once. The 68k build boxes for Debian barely keep up as it is.
Brad Boyer
flar@allandria.com
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