Re: Looking for suggestions for small, low power machine

["bifferos '" <bifferos%gmail.com@localhost>]

OK, thanks for that clarification.  I mentioned '386' because I
thought it was easier to say than 486SX without TSC.  I didn't realise
386 support created such problems. I wonder how Linux deals with this.

So, the Bifferboard is 486SX, and it won't boot NetBSD, is this
considered a bug?


On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Matthias Scheler 
<tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost> wrote:
> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:20:49PM +0100, bifferos ' wrote:
>> I presume this would
>> be a lot easier for someone who's worked on the x86 port, perhaps
>> whoever took out the 386 support in the first place (I've no idea if
>> that decision was made explicitly, and can be reversed).
>
> i386 support was removed by purposes because this CPU lacks support
> for atomic operations. Adding it back would be difficult and probably
> cause a performance loss for all other systems. Ther are also
> fundamental problem with NFS because the i386 CPU doesn't allow
> write protecting pages in the kernel.
>
> I am surprised that companies still built x86 CPU that aren't at least
> i486 compatible.
>
>        Kind regards
>
> --
> Matthias Scheler                                  http://zhadum.org.uk/
>