From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 25 13:37:56 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7BE8616A4CE for ; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:37:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from franky.speednet.com.au (franky.speednet.com.au [203.57.65.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACF5443D45 for ; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:37:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from andyf@speednet.com.au) Received: from hewey.af.speednet.com.au (udsl-3-062.QLD.dft.com.au [202.168.108.62])i0PLbnw5089185; Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:37:49 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from andyf@speednet.com.au) Received: from hewey.af.speednet.com.au (hewey.af.speednet.com.au [172.22.2.1])i0PLbmFB073729; Mon, 26 Jan 2004 07:37:48 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from andyf@speednet.com.au) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 07:37:48 +1000 (EST) From: Andy Farkas X-X-Sender: andyf@hewey.af.speednet.com.au To: Peter Jeremy In-Reply-To: <20040125195224.GA45925@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <20040126072708.Y72566@hewey.af.speednet.com.au> References: <20040124074052.GA12597@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> <20040125143203.G29442@gamplex.bde.org> <20040125195224.GA45925@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 80386 support in -current X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 21:37:56 -0000 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 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 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 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/