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That Old I386 on the way out

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 2:52 pm
by kc1di
Darn all my old 386 are about to become useless :lol: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2020196/ ... chips.html

Re: That Old I386 on the way out

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 3:08 pm
by xenopeek
Also GCC is now looking at dropping 80386 support. Are there any 80386 left that are operational, and running a modern Linux based distro? It would surprise me. I skipped over the 80386 back in the day and I won't miss it now :)

I went from a 8086 4.77 MHz (with turbo boost to 8 MHz!) directly to a 80486SX at 25 MHz. I can still recall doing my first C compile on the new machine and spending a good half hour trying to figure out what was going wrong--because on the 8086 the program I had been writing would take many minutes to compile and it compiled in just a few seconds on the 80486. I could just not wrap my head around this and figured it wasn't actually compiling and I had somehow messed up my compiler settings or something :lol:

Re: That Old I386 on the way out

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 3:10 pm
by Orbmiser
Well Not Useless as 386 architecture won't be needing or take advantage of what's new coming down the kernel pikes anyway.
Would locked it down when I reached that "Best Setup" for that ole' puppy and keep on using a still very functional setup.

But yep looks like the Kernel has become a huge monster since it's humble beginnings.
And needs to start trimming out the fat and trying to achieve a leaner more manageable entity.

Now if I can just get that kernel compiled for my Osbourne 1 & Amiga 3000....??? :P

Re: That Old I386 on the way out

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 3:30 pm
by overthetop
Orbmiser wrote:But yep looks like the Kernel has become a huge monster since it's humble beginnings.
And needs to start trimming out the fat and trying to achieve a leaner more manageable entity.
Exactly

Re: That Old I386 on the way out

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:04 pm
by moxiemontague
Don't worry about Linux dropping the 386. I got a copy of Windows 3.11 and MSDOS 5 I'll let you have for cheap.