Re: Debian ports for RiscPC, ARM710, etc.

[Jim Pick <jim@jimpick.com>]

Philip Blundell <philb@gnu.org> writes:

> >I see there is the Acorn RiscPC 600 series, Acorn RiscPC 700 series,
> >and then the Acorn StrongARM RiscPC.  I am guessing that the 600 and

> They are all the same basic machine.  You can plug in a CPU card
> with either a 610, a 710 or an SA110 on.

Ok.  I didn't know that.

Please excuse my ignorance - I couldn't find much good info on the
web.  Maybe I should have read more of the mailing list archives.
 
> >handle halfword instructions.  But the StrongARM RiscPC can handle the
> >halfword instructions, right?
> 
> No.  The RiscPC glue logic can't handle 16-bit transfers at all.  It was 
> originally designed with the ARM6 in mind.

Hmm.  Since it doesn't sound like there is going to be a big penalty
for not using the halfword instructions, I'd like to not use them so
that the StrongARM RiscPC users could use the Debian "arm"
distribution.  People with armv3 processors (ie. RiscPC 600, 700) could
use the "armv3" distribution.

How do I do that?  If I configure gcc using --with-cpu=strongarm, I'm
going to get the halfword instructions.  Is there another option I can
use?  ie. --with-cpu=armv4?  Or is this going to require patching gcc?

Or perhaps the StrongARM RiscPC is so rare, it's not worth decreasing
performance for the other StrongARM machines (like the NetWinder)?
The StrongARM RiscPC people would still be able to use the "armv3"
distribution.  What proportion of Linux/ARM users have the Acorn
StrongARM RiscPC?

Cheers,

 - Jim