Greetings!

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes) states:

"Most PowerPC chips switch endianness via a bit in the MSR (Machine State Register), with a second bit provided to allow the OS to run with a different endianness."

So the way I am understanding this is that the PPC architecture is capable of running in little-endian mode depending on a register flag that can be set. And that's about the end of my knowledge on the subject.

My question is this: does anyone have any experience with running PPC in little endian mode? And would FPC-compiled programs (specifically I'm cross compiling to powerpc-linux from x86_64-linux) targeted at PPC work in a little endian mode setup?

Thanks,

-SG

Sorry, I don't. You definitely have to fiddle with the endian settings under the relevant section of compiler/systems/i_linux.pas before you build your cross compiler, though.

Henry

Seth Grover wrote

And would FPC-compiled programs (specifically I'm cross compiling to powerpc-linux from x86_64-linux) targeted at PPC work in a little endian mode setup?

As Henry indicated, you'd have to modify the compiler to get it to generate little endian code for a PowerPC target. But little endian PowerPC has not been tested, so it's quite possible that it wouldn't work (e.g., some assembler helpers in the system unit will probably require modifications or disabling, because changing the endianess changes a.o. the layout of set-type variables).

Jonas

Henry and Jonas, thanks a lot for your responses and giving me an idea of at least where I'd want to start looking if that were the case. Honestly it's something of a pipe dream at the moment, so who knows if I'll even go down that path, but you've given me a place to begin if I do.

Have a good weekend,

-SG