Xref: utzoo comp.unix.i386:3485 comp.windows.x:19663 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!montnaro From: montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386,comp.windows.x Subject: Re: Why do you need a 387 to run X11R3? Message-ID: Date: 12 Mar 90 18:01:10 GMT References: <9868@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <20203@nuchat.UUCP> <4.523N2ggpc2@ficc.uu.net> <20301@nuchat.UUCP> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) Followup-To: comp.unix.i386 Organization: GE Corporate Research & Development, Schenectady, NY Lines: 16 In-reply-to: steve@nuchat.UUCP's message of 12 Mar 90 02:50:22 GMT In article <20301@nuchat.UUCP> steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia) writes: Personally I think the choice of doing FP emulation in the kernel was regretable, especially given the price-sensitivity common to most 386 users and the astounding price of 387 chips. But I can understand why they went that way, with the huge push for binary compatiblity that is going on. Sun also uses a kernel trap/emulation scheme on there SPARC machines. (They use (or used to use) compiler flags on there 680x0 machines.) What a disaster! Fortunately, the only machine that exhibits this problem is the 4/110. All other SPARC machines Sun sells have FPUs. Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com) -- Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com)