Re: "obsolete" hardware
Keith Owens (kaos@ocs.com.au)
Mon, 09 Jun 1997 13:41:45 +1000
On Sun, 8 Jun 1997 17:51:56 -0400,
Rob Hagopian <Rob.Hagopian@vu.union.edu> wrote:
> But I really see no reason to have 386 support (and I'd say drop math
>emulation too so that people can use FP in the kernel) in the 2.1.x and
>later kernels. None of the new features are really worth implementing on
>such old hardware. Is anyone really going to have an IPv6 modem pool? And
>if you're doing IPv6 routing wouldn't you want a 486 anyways?
Don't you dare! A 386 makes a decent PPP link handler, it can cope
with 28.8 in its sleep. In the next few days I will be upgrading the
386SX/25 to 2.1.x and running IPv6 on it. That way my 6bone connection
no longer relies on my test machine.
As for dropping FP emulation so you can use FP in the kernel. Can the
kernel exception handler detect FP instructions in the kernel and
emulate them the same as it does for user FP instructions?