Re: 80386 support

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> http://www.NetBSD.org/changes/changes-5.0.html#port-i386
>>> Remove support for 80386 level CPUs. PR port-i386/36163. [ad 20071115] 
> nobody seems to care.

Someone cares (besides me, that is).  Indeed, NetBSD might have lost a
user over it.

What prompted me to ask was that I was corresponding with someone who
was building an 80386-based board.  I can quote this much because it
was sent to a public mailing list:

> The primary goal of the S-100 80386 CPU board project is to run a
> "modern sophisticated" operating system such as Linux and/or NetBSD.

He said something, off-list, about NetBSD being the first OS to be
ported to it after DOS variants; I checked here, then (after getting
the responses) pointed out to him that NetBSD had dropped 80386
support.  He was surprised.  I then pointed to mail-index's archived
copy of the "we're going to a three-tier paradigm" announcement.  He
was pretty shocked, asking if NetBSD had been taken over internally by
a corporation, saying it was very unlike the NetBSD he knew....

I don't know whether he's still planning to put NetBSD on his 80386s.
I did point out he could go back to earlier releases and get 80386
support that way, but I don't know whether that's suitable for his
purposes or not - I haven't heard him say either way.

> I think reintroduction of an 80386 port with the necessary
> feature-stripping and minimization would be a good exercise, but it
> could happen on just about any platform.  (vax, pmax, and various 68k
> ports immediately come to mind.)

I'm not sure what you're talking about here.  Taken literally, it
sounds as though you're suggesting reintroducing 80386 support on
non-x86 ports, which strikes me as complete nonsense short of running a
hardware emulator, so you are presumably speaking metaphorically in
some way.

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