Info for Cyrix 6x86 developers

Paul Gortmaker (paul@rasty.anu.edu.au)
Sun, 8 Dec 1996 21:37:36 +1000 (EST)

There has been a few people keen on enhancing linux to better detect and
support the Cyrix 6x86 chips as of late. Some of you may not know that
IBM has a fair number of useful docs on these chips, and thus been
only looking around Cyrix's site. A good starting point is:

http://www.chips.ibm.com/products-nojs/x86-nojs/x86dev/l3devibm6x86.html

Those of you keen on detection should probably grab a copy of the IBM doco
describing how to do detection in a reasonable fashion (i.e. without
getting invalid instruction on CPUID ;-) as doc #40204 at:

http://www.chips.ibm.com/products-nojs/x86-nojs/x86dev/l4devapp6x.html

Once you get 6x86 detection sorted on common chips, it should be tested
on those older DLC (386 pin compatible) and Blue-Lightning IBM chips
to make sure it doesn't do anything strange on them, since they will
also pass the cyrix "division test" described in #40204.

Hope this helps you mob out a bit.

Paul.