x86-32 PAE

Greetings all,


I've been searching for PAE support info.  AFAICT, Frank van der Linden 
has written x86-64 support that can be modified for x86-32 PAE, but no 
"try and see if this works" patches are floating about.

How much interest is there in x86 PAE?  I'm unsure how much I'd be able 
to contribute to the effort, but as a minimum have a Proliant DL580 with 
7 GB that currently sits idle, hoping to run NetBSD instead of FreeBSD.
I also can take it down to 4, 4.5, or 5 GB to approach some edge cases.

Re device drivers that require 32-bit addressing:  What about a 
MALLOC(9) flag signalling "must be below 4 GB"?  Would that not 
alleviate the need for bounce buffers?

I don't understand Thomas Thai's point #2 in

 	http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2004/03/23/0004.html

Could someone please elaborate/explain?


TIA,
Eddy
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