Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!ge-dab!codas!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: RISC is a nasty no-no!
Message-ID: <3530@killer.UUCP>
Date: 28 Feb 88 06:45:55 GMT
References: <179@wsccs.UUCP>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 38

in article <179@wsccs.UUCP>, terry@wsccs.UUCP (terry) says:
[describes a probram which runs on systems with a minimum of porting, e.g. 2
hours for a Harris minicomputer: then details hours trying to port to a Sun 4,
and failing: ]

> THE REASON:  Type-casting.  You can't.  Small programs seem to, but it doesn't
> work.  Bytes tend to be word aligned.  Other messy stuff.  It was not a
> pretty sight (site?).  I am sure there are other problems, but geez, this is
> demonstrably portable code.
> 
> 	I am all for RISC machines when reasonably implimented.  My idea of
> RISC is an instruction set that is sufficently small to allow the manufacturer
> to call it RISC and not get sued, but sufficiently varied to allow me to go
> off and have the assembler impliment enough macro's that my compiler thinks
> it's running on a 680x0.  ----Oh rats!  If I can't have that, at LEAST my
> portable C compiler should be.  Sun must have some good people to be able
> to have ported a semblance of UNIX to this thing.

There's a couple of possible problems that may be bugging you:

1) Sun's Unix isn't. That is, it's a huge superset of Unix, with features of
both BSD4.x and Sys V all mashed together.

2) Sun's "C" compiler apparently isn't very good at handling a lot of 
things, from your description. Or maybe there's a flag you didn't set, or
something similiar. 

I've used a Pyramid 90x and an IBM RT. I've read papers on the AMD29000 and
the MIPSco chip. I see no inherent reason for portable programs to not run on
any of them, except possibly the 29000 (which lacks byte addressing in its
native rendition).

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191      
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg         Lafayette, LA 70509            

Come on, girl, I ain't looking for no fight/You ain't no beauty, but hey
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