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Mailing lists / fpc-pascal / 2001-10

m68k and PPC development

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Brad Campbell

G'day all,

I have just picked up a couple of PPC machines and an '040 68k machine. With linux on them, would they be suitable for helping with compiler development? I figure I'd like to help the porting effort if I can..

Where to start?
Who to contact?

Brad.... /"\ Save the Forests \ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN Burn a Greenie. X AGAINST HTML MAIL / \

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Full_Name
to Brad Campbell

Quoting Brad Campbell :

Show quoted text 5 lines
G'day all, I have just picked up a couple of PPC machines and an '040 68k machine. With linux on them, would they be suitable for helping with compiler development? I figure I'd like to help the porting effort if I can..

The 68000 machine is probably past it Linux wise. If it will run Linux, it will be mkLinux which is probably not the best linux in the world, but will suffice.

Are your PPC's Apple branded? New world/Old world? Do they have PCI or NuBus?

All NuBus PPC macs are also cursed to run mkLinux (if at all.) It's kind of a weird Linux that is based on a Mach micro kernal rather that monolithic. Apple had a hand in it at some point. I really doubt you'll get any funky windows managers running under it (though don't quote me on that) but it should suffice.

If you are blessed with an Apple PCI PPC you can probably run RedHat PPC/YelloDog PPC or even SuSe PPC. SuSe have just released 7.1 for PPC.

A lot of IBM's and other PPC based computers (including the BeBox and Apple Clones) will run various other flavours of Linux. Some may run a well known vendors, others may be a little more bleading edge.

Where to start?

Have a look at the various Mac related Linux distros to see if your machine is supported. Yellow Dog is a PPC only (I think) distro. Not all Macs are supported (or fully supported) because Apple does have a habbit of making proprietry hardware/mobo's. The only reason MacOS runs on some of the Apple machines is because they *made* it work ;-)

Who to contact?

Have a look at Pascal Central (http://pascal-central.com).. they had a whole page on porting Free Pascal to the PPC at one point. Maybe someone else will step in here too ;-)

Matt

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d? s+++:+ a- C++ UL+ P L++ E---- W- N+ o+ K- w O- M V PS PE-- Y PGP- t- 5-- X- R- tv+ b+ DI++ D+ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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Brad Campbell
to Full_Name
Full_Name wrote 11 lines
Quoting Brad Campbell : > G'day all, > > I have just picked up a couple of PPC machines and an '040 68k machine. > With linux on them, would they be suitable for helping with compiler > development? I figure I'd like to help the porting effort if I can.. The 68000 machine is probably past it Linux wise. If it will run Linux, it will be mkLinux which is probably not the best linux in the world, but will suffice.

Ok, the PPC macs are PCI and run Debian, the m68k mac also runs Debian.. I have been running linux on the m68k Mac for 12 months, I would not consider it past it at all.. In fact, I have an old iiSi with an '030 that also runs debian. It's a bit slow but it's still a 68k Mac, and with a ppp link to the rest of my network. So no, all of my machines run a native kernel.

Show quoted text 5 lines
> Who to contact? Have a look at Pascal Central (http://pascal-central.com).. they had a whole page on porting Free Pascal to the PPC at one point. Maybe someone else will step in here too ;-)

I will do just that..
Thanks..

Brad.... /"\ Save the Forests \ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN Burn a Greenie. X AGAINST HTML MAIL / \

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Marco van de Voort
to Full_Name: Quoting Brad Campbell : The 68000 machine is probably past it Linux wise. If it will run…

[ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ]

Show quoted text 10 lines
Quoting Brad Campbell : > G'day all, > > I have just picked up a couple of PPC machines and an '040 68k machine. > With linux on them, would they be suitable for helping with compiler > development? I figure I'd like to help the porting effort if I can.. The 68000 machine is probably past it Linux wise. If it will run Linux, it will be mkLinux which is probably not the best linux in the world, but will suffice.

NetBSD is more advanced on 68000's. I'm currently trying to install it onto my '030, but have some problems with bad sectors on disks.

You'll probably a customised apple HD setup for that. (so that it recognizes non Apple HDs)

Show quoted text 6 lines
Are your PPC's Apple branded? New world/Old world? Do they have PCI or NuBus? All NuBus PPC macs are also cursed to run mkLinux (if at all.) It's kind of a weird Linux that is based on a Mach micro kernal rather that monolithic. Apple had a hand in it at some point. I really doubt you'll get any funky windows managers running under it (though don't quote me on that) but it should suffice.

There seems to be starting to get a monolithical PPC Performa kernel too. But like mklinux it is all vague.

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Jonas Maebe
to Brad Campbell: Ok, the PPC macs are PCI and run Debian, the m68k mac also runs Debian.. I have been…
Brad Campbell wrote 7 lines
> Have a look at Pascal Central (http://pascal-central.com).. they had a > whole > page on porting Free Pascal to the PPC at one point. Maybe someone > else will > step in here too ;-) I will do just that..

They don't have very current information. They do have information about a list you can subscribe to (in which I am as well), but there's not very much traffic on it.

The problem with an 68k Mac version of the compiler, is that the register usage in the compiler conflicts with what the Mac 68k ABI specifies and it's all hard coded in 1.0.x. I think the 68k linux versino of the compiler is usable.

The problem with all PowerPC verinos of the compiler, is that there isn't any yet :) I've been working quite a bit on it lately and large parts of 1.1 have been made processor independent already (and some PowerPC support is already in place), but it still needs a lot of work. The most productive you can do currently, is probably testing the RTL helpers I've written until now (in rtl/powerpc of the main branch compiler, you can download those RTL sources from the development page of the website).

Jonas

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Full_Name
to Marco van de Voort: [ Charset ISO-8859-1 unsupported, converting... ] NetBSD is more advanced on 68000's. I'm…

Quoting Marco van de Voort :

There seems to be starting to get a monolithical PPC Performa kernel too. But like mklinux it is all vague.

That's cool ;-) Is it just me or does the whole mkLinux site just run round in circles??

Matt

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d? s+++:+ a- C++ UL+ P L++ E---- W- N+ o+ K- w O- M V PS PE-- Y PGP- t- 5-- X- R- tv+ b+ DI++ D+ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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Jonas Maebe
to Full_Name
Full_Name wrote 6 lines
> There seems to be starting to get a monolithical PPC Performa kernel > too. But like mklinux it is all vague. That's cool ;-) Is it just me or does the whole mkLinux site just run round in circles??

What do you mean? <http://www.mklinux.org> looks fine here...

Note that the project has seriously slowed down because Apple stopped working on it when they started with Mac OS X. Since Darwin (the open source underpinnings of Mac OS X) inherits quite a bit of MkLinux (it also uses the Mach micro-kernel, albeit a newer and much improved version), they could use the expertise they built up while working on it quite well.

Jonas

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Ramon Bosque
to Jonas Maebe: They don't have very current information. They do have information about a list you can…

El Mie 10 Oct 2001 12:33, escribiste:

Show quoted text 13 lines
On woensdag, oktober 10, 2001, at 11:26 , Brad Campbell wrote: >> Have a look at Pascal Central (http://pascal-central.com).. they had a >> whole >> page on porting Free Pascal to the PPC at one point. Maybe someone >> else will >> step in here too ;-) > > I will do just that.. They don't have very current information. They do have information about a list you can subscribe to (in which I am as well), but there's not very much traffic on it.

Hello Jonas

So, is there any progress with the MacOS port of Free Pascal? Are there any plans about when a beta version will be available? Will the version from the people in Pascal Central be merged with the main branch of the compiler?

Regards

Ramon Bosque

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Jonas Maebe
to Ramon Bosque
Ramon Bosque wrote 6 lines
> They don't have very current information. They do have information > about > a list you can subscribe to (in which I am as well), but there's not > very much traffic on it. So, is there any progress with the MacOS port of Free Pascal?

Mac OS specific: no. Mac OS related: yes. The m68k code generator has been updated to the 1.0.5 branch and as sucht he m68k version is becoming equivalent with the i386 version in 1.0.5 concerning supported features. In 1.1, the code generator is becoming more and more processor independent and several routines for PowerPC support have been added in the last two months.

Are there any plans about when a beta version will be available?

No.

Will the version from the people in Pascal Central be merged with the main branch of the compiler?

They don't have any version. They seem to simply wait for me to finish it :(

Jonas

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