From: softbrek AT POOL DOT Informatik DOT RWTH-Aachen DOT DE
Subject: Re: Non-present 80387 when assembling
To: RGRUNWAL AT wasp DOT cs DOT cowan DOT edu DOT au (Ron Grunwald)
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 13:49:22 +0100 (MET)
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu (djgpp)

Hello, all

I think I have to clarify this heavily:

> 
> Richard Hine wrote:
> 
> > I am trying to use the gnu C compiler on a number of DOS PCs.  The
> > compiler was built for me from by a colleague who tells me that it was
> > djgpp version 1.11.
> 
and Ron Grunwald answered as follows:

> What I'm wondering here is that maybe GCC was built on a machine that 
> had a math-coprocessor, either builtin or external. This may cause 
> the newly built version of GCC to use FPU instructions, and hence 
> cause your problems.
> 

[rest deleted]

Sorry, Ron, but that answer is wrong, if I've lost all my knowledge
on djgpp usage without a copro.

The compiler, and this *includes* the distributed version, *does* use
floating-point instructions, if it isn't forced not to do so during
the building process of the compiler itself (and forcing this is a
real pain, as you will have to provide a math-emulator to build into
cc1.) So, everyone who wants to compile anything with gcc (if not
someone corrects me on this) *must* have some sort of '387 (extra
chip, or inside his 486 or P5).

So, what do you do if you don't have such a piece of silicon, you ask?

EMULATE IT! That is: put the string "emu [...]/emu387" into your GO32
environment variable, and make sure you have the 387 emulator, either
DJ's version (sitting in djeoe112.zip), or wmemu112.zip.

For further information : RTFM (Read The djgpp.Faq, Man!)

Hans-Bernhard Broeker