Re: 80386 support

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 09:50:31PM -0700, Aaron J. Grier wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 02:45:53PM +0900, Izumi Tsutsui wrote:
> > 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.  gcc started emitting floating point insructions
> that MATH_EMULATE couldn't handle as early as NetBSD-3.0 .
> 
> 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.)

IIRC i386 support was dropped because of problems with the mmu.
Keeping the hacks required had serious side effects on the code
readability (etc).

Most of the small x86 processors being made these days are extended
486, not 386 ones.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost