[ros-kernel] Different Hardware Architectures

[Michael Rich]

> Mark this words is a complete waste of time and you won't 
> finish it in a short time. I think a port now will only delay 
> the project, is simply out of time. And even more if I where 
> to do a port I would do it for Alpha or MIPS where NT 4.0 
> already runs, not to PPC. Or what about Itanium, seems that 
> Itanium is going to be supported by MS for a while since 
> WinXP runs there.

While I agree that its not a trivial task to port ROS, you have to start
somewhere, that's why this is such a great project, each time this topic has
been brought up, its always been discussed in positive tones (but also in
realistic ones).  If someone has the time, the energy and the patience (and
the desire) to port ROS, then more power to them, I'd be glad to offer my
help where I can.

BTW, the NT4 does run on PPC, but never made it up to SP3 level before it
was dropped.  I have NT4 SP2/PPC stored locally on my system if anyone
happens to need it.

Personally I feel that if PowerPC is targeted, we should not fool with any
legacy bus system, only the more modern systems like Apple did when they
built Mac OSX.  I've mentioned it before, but we could target the Pegasos
PPC system and might could eventually bundle with the systems
(http://www.pegasosppc.com/).  The systems use modern components, so there
should not be anything exotic to have to support with them.  The G4 chips
they use still have the bi-endian feature in them also, so the OS could be
supported via that chip.


mike