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mikaku / Fiwix

A UNIX-like kernel for the i386 architecture
https://www.fiwix.org
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FPU software emulation #9

Open mezantrop opened 1 year ago

mezantrop commented 1 year ago

A question, not an issue, if you please. I see: "i386 processor (with floating-point processor)" in the minimum requirements. Are you planning to implement FPU software emulation, perhaps, at some point? I'd be interesting in reviving my 386sx machine with some modern, yet lightweight OS.

mikaku commented 1 year ago

I'm in the same situation. I've a PC/104 with a 386SX with 4MB of RAM but without floating-point processor. I like to power on this machine from time to time and I saw that it 's somehow able to run FiwixOS 3.2, but some binaries crash because they try to run some FPU instructions.

I was investigating if there is a way to tell GCC to not use any FPU instruction (or use an emulation on its own instead), but I didn't see any option for this.

Sincerely, give FPU support to the Fiwix kernel is out of scope of my possibilities and is not in my priority list right now. Maybe in the future someone finds interesting to include a minimal FPU support.

Sorry for the inconveniences.

mezantrop commented 1 year ago

@mikaku thank you very much for the answer. I'll follow you and keep eye on the FiwixOS . Good luck with the amazing project.

mikaku commented 1 year ago

Thank you!