Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 07:37:48 +1000 (EST) From: Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au> To: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 80386 support in -current Message-ID: <20040126072708.Y72566@hewey.af.speednet.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20040125195224.GA45925@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> References: <20040124074052.GA12597@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> <xzpptd9qsf0.fsf@dwp.des.no> <20040125143203.G29442@gamplex.bde.org> <20040125195224.GA45925@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
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Peter Jeremy wrote:
> Interesting. Does anyone on this list actually use -CURRENT on a 386?
...
>
> Is it time to bite the bullet and fully desupport the 80386? It looks
> like threads don't work and it's likely that other bitrot will set in
> in the absence of active testing.
Yes. Bring on the axes!
This came up almost a year ago (late Feb 2003). Here are some exerps from
a few emails I kept on the subject:
%%%
John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
I personally think that we should not support the 80386 in 5.x.
However when that has been brought up before there were a lot of
theoretical objections.
%%%
%%%
Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote:
Well, unless somebody actually manages to put a -current on an i386
and run the tests I suggested in a couple of weeks, then I think
those theoretical objections stand very weakly in the light of
proven reality :-)
%%%
%%%
Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote:
My main concern would be if the chips have the necessary "umphf"
to actually do a real-world job once they're done running all the
overhead of 5.0-R. The lack of cmpxchg8 makes the locking horribly
expensive.
%%%
This last point is the clincher. The chip does NOT have enough "umphf". I
actually managed to boot a -current (from back then) on a 80386SX and it
was torturously slow. An ls(1) on my empty home directory took 15 seconds.
My VAX is faster.
Lets here it from *anyone* actually using one.. but I doubt it.
--
:{ andyf@speednet.com.au
Andy Farkas
System Administrator
Speednet Communications
http://www.speednet.com.au/
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