Re: 80386 support

[Andy Ball <ball%grex.org@localhost>]

Hello Mouse,

    M> I don't have a complete list of my own reasons, but
     > three of the more prominent pieces I'm aware of
     > include emotional attachment to the platform
     > (nostalgia, if you will, though that seems to me like
     > an incomplete word for the attachments I have to the
     > VAX)...

    I can understand nostalgia.  I have worked on many
computers over the years that I liked for various reasons
(e.g. my SPARCstation, which ran NetBSD/sparc, understood
BSD disklabels and had a decent serial console).  Almost all
of my older machines have since been recycled though because
I couldn't justify the space they took up and because in
practice they just weren't all that useful any more.

    Even if I had the space to set up a computer museum and
the time and inclination to fire the machines up once a year
and wait for them to boot, I wouldn't necessarily want
NetBSD to support them if that meant holding back an
operating system that many people depend on for production
use on modern hardware.

    As for NetBSD in embedded applications, that is a
separate question.  I have to wonder though how many
developers would put an 80386 into a modern design when
there are probably much cleaner, faster, more power-
efficient and less expensive microprocessors that could do
the same job.

- Andy Ball