nathaniel  daw (ta-ndd1@columbia.edu) wrote:

: There's a point there, but on the other hand it doesn't seem sensible to 
: cripple ourselves as more and more people move to newer platforms. I 
: guess the answer would involve balancing (a) does it cause tremendous 
: gains on a pentium, (b) does it make a crippling difference a 386, and
: (c) how many people are still using 386s anyway compared to 486, p5? I 
: suspect the answers to (a) and (b) are no; I have no idea about c.

We use a few 386 boxes as ppp line routers in the rhein.de network, some
of them running NetBSD.

I would certainly want to have the fastest possible kernel for them...
on the other hand, I can build a complete kernel on a 486/66 box in less
than half an hour, so as long as I can control the optimization switch,
it doesn't matter.

Regards,
	Ignatios Souvatzis