chcu275@ut-emx.UUCP (Noel Bell) (01/18/89)
Regarding the past discussions of developing a hobby-type or kit computer based on an NSC chip set: 1. What are the various camps ( power, price, etc ) working on these days? ( I lean towards power; >= 80386 ) 2. Has the possibility of using the future GNU kernel increased? What is a popular wag ( wild a** guess ) for the date of availability of the GNU kernel? 3. What are the possibilities of getting a decent fortran compiler to run on a NSC kit that might result from work discussed in this newsgroup? Will there be a GNU f77? I read the previous discussions with great interest; however, being a relatively worthless chemical engineer ( can't make pcbs or semiconductors ), I kept my distance. I would be very interested in obtaining an NSC 32k system but while I do like to program in C, I also want to have a fortran compiler for any system I purchase. Within the next few months I will be in a position to participate in the development of a system by buying a computer and at least providing 1 dumb user to test software and hardware. Don't ask me to write a fortran compiler if you want one that works sometime in the next 10 years. Sorry for rambling. Thanks in advance for any replies or postings. P.S. I have used an Encore ( NSC 32332 ) for some numerical work. It's not bad even without floating point hardware but faster is better. Noel Bell Department of Chemical Engineering U of Texas at Austin chcu275@emx.cc.utexas.edu
bdale@hp-col.HP.COM (Bdale Garbee) (01/20/89)
> 1. What are the various camps ( power, price, etc ) working > on these days? ( I lean towards power; >= 80386 ) I'm working with a small group of friends on a flat-out performance implementation of a 32532 single-board, probably with NuBus for expansion. Most relevent I/O onboard, a separate board for workstation-class graphics. > 2. Has the possibility of using the future GNU kernel increased? > What is a popular wag ( wild a** guess ) for the date of > availability of the GNU kernel? The current intention is to port BSD unix, or perhaps Mach, and run with GCC and mostly GNU utilities. If/when a kernel becomes available, it would then not be hard to use. > 3. What are the possibilities of getting a decent fortran > compiler to run on a NSC kit that might result from work > discussed in this newsgroup? Will there be a GNU f77? I have no idea. I'm standardizing on the GCC/G++ compilers for the system, but have no interest in Fortran. > Within the next few months I will be in a position to participate > in the development of a system by buying a computer and at least > providing 1 dumb user to test software and hardware. I hope to have a proto up some time this spring, and to publish the design and maybe do a PCB run this summer. Wild-ass scheduling at it's best! > It's not bad even without floating point hardware but faster > is better. Faster == Better. Bdale Garbee, N3EUA