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

[Kristian V. D. V. <va...@li...>]

On Sunday 31 October 2004 7:37 am, 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 hasnt been in active sale for many
> many years, and I dont think that Syllable should be known as a
> you-can-run-it-on-your-oldest-computer system.

Syllable on anything less than i586 is a total waste of time.  Even if you 
remove the few Pentium-only instructions and actually boot the kernel on a 
i486 Syllable only really supports PCI devices.  Supporting all the ISA 
hardware out there on i486 class machines is a waste of time.  We'd need an 
ISA bus manager with PnP support and changes to a lot of drivers to search 
for and support ISA hardware.

Not only that but the default target for gas is i586; all of the software 
compiled in the last nine months is i586 only.  You'd have to recompile 
everything for i386, and then everyone else looses out because we'd either 
have i386 only binaries on new hardware or we'd have two sets of binaries.

Seriously, forget about old hardware.  We won't support it!

-- 
Vanders
http://syllable.sourceforge.net/
http://www.liqwyd.com