As far as I understand newer versions of Gcc have dropped support for some architectures/hardware platforms. That is the reason, why for example NetBSD is forced to use older Gcc versions for some CPUs, while they only can use the newest Gcc for the i386 and amd65 platforms.
Wile gcc has the name of being an open source project, it is actually run by a few companies, which, if they don't see any need to still support an older CPU, just drop support.
From
http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.0/changes.html
Quote:
Obsolete Systems
Support for a number of older systems has been declared obsolete in GCC 4.0. Unless there is activity to revive them, the next release of GCC will have their sources permanently removed.
All GCC ports for the following processor architectures have been declared obsolete:
* Intel i860
* Ubicom IP2022
* National Semiconductor NS32K
* Texas Instruments TMS320C[34]x
Also, those for some individual systems have been obsoleted:
* SPARC family
o SPARClite-based systems (sparclite-*-coff, sparclite-*-elf, sparc86x-*-elf)
o OpenBSD 32-bit (sparc-*-openbsd*)
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