Um, really? We build it with gcc 2.95.2 (with a patch called const-fold-patch) and binutils 2.9.5.

Hard to argue with a kernel that runs on my empeg right now (it's still virgin, no hacks yet ) but I do remember having trouble with 2.95. I further remember it not being recommended for 2.2 kernels on account of it being to agressive in some cases and doing unexpected things with bad asm code. That might have been x86 assembly, though.

Borislav