Re: Looking for suggestions for small, low power machine

[Matthias Scheler <tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost>]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:20:49PM +0100, bifferos ' wrote:
> I presume this would
> be a lot easier for someone who's worked on the x86 port, perhaps
> whoever took out the 386 support in the first place (I've no idea if
> that decision was made explicitly, and can be reversed).

i386 support was removed by purposes because this CPU lacks support
for atomic operations. Adding it back would be difficult and probably
cause a performance loss for all other systems. Ther are also
fundamental problem with NFS because the i386 CPU doesn't allow
write protecting pages in the kernel.

I am surprised that companies still built x86 CPU that aren't at least
i486 compatible.

        Kind regards

-- 
Matthias Scheler                                  http://zhadum.org.uk/