Re: [Syllable-kernel] upcoming Syllable patches..

[Maritimus <rea...@ih...>]

BurningShadow wrote:

> I got a 486 somewhere (and it should be working), so I can test it.
>
> But who would run it on a 486? The 486 hasn’t been in active sale for many many years, and I don’t think that Syllable should be known as a you-can-run-it-on-your-oldest-computer system. That’s the way people (in Denmark) see Linux, and now they can’t understand why they can’t run Fedora on their pre-pentium system.

Running Syllable on a 1989 DX25 wouldn't be very practical, but the end of generation 486s and the non-Intel Pentium / P6 clones aren't pre-Pentium in performance, as some of these chips can beat a Pentium 100. When you add in if OpenMOSIX is ported, and specialised tasks like cheap low-power kiosks, they become more
feasible. Syllable runs fine on a P1 as it is.

If people in developed countries on AMD64 FXs (like you see in the computing forums) think they'd be demasculinated by running an operating system with system requirements that are lower than WinXP... what can be said.


> In fact I think the exact upper side should be done.10 years from now, there will be almost no 32bit’s left, so at that time it won’t make sense to keep 32bit code. It should be wiped out, in order to keep the system up-to-date.

Intel called AMD64 "Extended Memory Technology" to be derisive to AMD, but that's really all it means for nearly all desktops. If the memory addressing issue wasn't present, then the migration to 64-bit would be very slow because there just isn't any advantage to it unless you're doing specialised number crunching..
Technologically, support for AMD64 will be driven by applications needing full multigigabyte RAM addressability, not much else.



> >Otherwise, it's probably never going to get fixed.
> And I think that’s the best.

But why not? It's just some lines of code, it isn't of any disadvantage to the system, it's just like removing a minor bug that stops someone's video card from working.


> >> The NexGen Nx586, AMD/Cyrix 5x86s, 486s etc, don't have it at all. Not that
> >> Syllable can currently run on those because of a couple of lines of Kurt's
> >> i586 assembler enthusiasm, but someone's going to want to sooner or later :)
> >
> >Besides the code which assumes the presence of the cpuid instruction, is
> >there any other assembly language code that anyone knows of that is
> >keeping it from working on 486s?  I know how to fix the cpuid code to
> >detect if the machine doesn't support cpuid, but how many people these
> >days have access to a 486-class machine with math coprocessor that they
> >want to run Syllable on?  If you do, let me know and I may be able to
> >work something out.  Otherwise, it's probably never going to get fixed.
> >