Re: 80386 support

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 23 August 2012 04:56, Aaron J. Grier <agrier%poofygoof.com@localhost> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 07:33:29AM +0100, David Laight wrote:
>> IIRC i386 support was dropped because of problems with the mmu.
>> Keeping the hacks required had serious side effects on the code
>> readability (etc).
>
> the MMU issues were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back,
> but my point was that the target platform had problems for years before
> it was officially discontinued.
>
>> Most of the small x86 processors being made these days are extended
>> 486, not 386 ones.
>
> yet NetBSD continues to support architectures which haven't been fabbed
> in years.  when did the last VAX wafer roll off the line at Hudson (or
> wherever they were last made)?

But supporting the vax doesn't significantly impair NetBSD's
performance and maintenance on other platforms, and there are more
people interested in running NetBSD/vax than there NetBSD/i386 on
80386 hardware.

NetBSD has dropped support for (to my knowledge) three entire
platforms, da30 - an 68030 based system of which I believe only one
example ever existed, pc532 and playstation2 (both dropped due to
toolchain unavailability (gcc dropped ns32k support and the
platstation2 compiler was never generally available).

Its unfortunate, but a pragmatic approach to managing resources.

Now I think it would be great if someone would step up and add back
80386 support as a fresh port to the NetBSD tree, but there has to be
someone who wants to do so.

For someone who just wants to run NetBSD on an 80386 but isn't
interested in the above, NetBSD-4 is still available and not going
away.