Re: "obsolete" hardware
david parsons (o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s)
10 Jun 1997 23:09:28 -0700
In article <linux.kernel.v03102801afc0d88448ea@[149.106.149.82]>,
Rob Hagopian <Rob.Hagopian@vuser.vu.union.edu> wrote:
>>One of our firewall/routers was a 386 with 20Mb Seagate ST205 MFM drives.
>>Its had a disk upgrade to a large (mostly empty) disk as the 205 was starting
>>to die of old age
>
> They really don't make bad machines for routers and dialin lines. We have
>two 386s with just a network card and some modems acting as dialin
>terminals.
> But I really see no reason to have 386 support (and I'd say drop math
>emulation too so that people can use FP in the kernel) in the 2.1.x and
>later kernels. None of the new features are really worth implementing on
>such old hardware.
You've got to be kidding.
A big '386 is more than enough horsepower to run Linux. Yeah, it
will take a while to do kernel compiles (something that can be
improved by wads of memory and a good fast scsi disk), but they
certainly are reasonable for a small workstation (after all, they're
about 3-4 780s worth of processing power, and that's not totally
robbed by the cruddy PC architecture.)
I'd be miffed if haven (a mighty 386/20 compaq luggable, with 10mb
of proprietary core) wasn't able to run Linux anymore.
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david parsons \bi/ abuse@localhost
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