Having learned that current has support for my Elite Ultra ethernet board, I'm
trying to upgrade from 0.9.  However, I've discovered that the kernel
available with the binary snapshots won't run on my Dell Pentium machine.  It
recognizes the CPU as a "586-class" CPU, and then panics with "CPU class not
configured".  Great.  Just absolutely, bloody great.

Now, the 0.9 GENERICAHA kernel ran just fine on my machine; no surprise, as it
doesn't know anything at all about "586-class" CPUs, and called mine a
486-class.  

But between there somewhere, Pentium support seems to have been added to the
kernel.  Which is all fine and dandy, but:

If you're going to call a kernel "GENERIC", shouldn't it work on all of the
CPU types the distribution supports?!

Could the next snapshot _please_, _please_ include a kernel that either has
the 586 support compiled in, or just does what the 0.9 kernel did and
recognizes the Pentium as a "486"?  As it stands now, there's an ever-growing
class of machines (bottom-of-the-line Pentium 60Mhz boxes are cheaper than
top-of-the line 486es in many cases!) on which 0.9 will run, but the -current
kernel from the binary snapshot won't.

Is this just an oversight, or an intentional omission?  If the latter, why?

Incidentally, the -current kernel as of a few months ago mis-identified some
486/66 VESA machines as "586-class" and refused to run.  Dunno if it still
does.


Thor


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