H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
> following question...
>
> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful for
forensic purposes and recovering important data. I've personally had
to do this many times, and I'm sure others have as well.
Booting is such a critical process that a user would be completely
lost as to why it fails, especially if they can't see any output on
the screen. I think it would be a shame to prevent Linux from running
on these machines.
Vlad
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On 05/02/2007 12:41 AM, Vlad wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
>> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
>> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
>> following question...
>>
>> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
>
> Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful for
> forensic purposes and recovering important data. I've personally had
> to do this many times, and I'm sure others have as well.
>
> Booting is such a critical process that a user would be completely
> lost as to why it fails, especially if they can't see any output on
> the screen. I think it would be a shame to prevent Linux from running
> on these machines.
He wasn't asking about doing away with all video output on 386/486s, but
with special Super VGA adapter specific modes. You'd have normal VGA
available as always, and VESA if the videocard supports it (which all cards
that _can_ do more than 80x25 do).
Rene.
--- Rene Herman <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 05/02/2007 12:41 AM, Vlad wrote:
>
> > H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>
> >> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
> >> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
> >> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
> >> following question...
> >>
> >> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
> >
> > Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful
> for
> > forensic purposes and recovering important data. I've personally
> had
> > to do this many times, and I'm sure others have as well.
> >
> > Booting is such a critical process that a user would be completely
> > lost as to why it fails, especially if they can't see any output
> on
> > the screen. I think it would be a shame to prevent Linux from
> running
> > on these machines.
>
> He wasn't asking about doing away with all video output on 386/486s,
> but
> with special Super VGA adapter specific modes. You'd have normal VGA
>
> available as always, and VESA if the videocard supports it (which
> all cards
> that _can_ do more than 80x25 do).
Oh, OK. Thanks for clarifying this for me.
Vlad
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On May 1 2007 15:41, Vlad wrote:
>H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
>> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
>> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
>> following question...
>>
>> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
>
>Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful for
>forensic purposes and recovering important data.
Not only that, but there's tons of fun involved. I mean, when was the
last time you ran a *recent* kernel from the 2006/2007 era on an
original i386 from 1990 with 3 bogomips? :) (Though I guess these
boxes don't have any 'modern' video besides 640x480x16 or 320x200x256
anyway.)
Jan
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