[M3devel] 386?486?586?686?etc.?

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 03:36:18PM +0000, Jay K wrote:
> 
> > I'm still running an old 100 MHz Pentium and using it on a daily basis.
> >> Wow. What for? And with Modula-3? What OS?


It's my most reliable machine.  The kind of reliable that's been running 
for something like two decades and shows signs of running for two more
if I can continue to get secure OS support for it. My newer machines 
keep burning up graphics cards and the like.  It is running Debian Lenny 
at the moment; a few months ago it was on Debian Etch.

It's the boundary between my LAN and the internet.

I last used Modula 3 on it a few years ago, throwing together an 
experimental type-checked language interpreter to test some ideas about 
language design.  I'm not running Modula 3 on it right now, but since 
Modula 3 is still my systems language of choice, I'd hesitate to say I 
won't be doing it again.

- hendrik


> 
> 
>  - Jay
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> From: jay.krell at cornell.edu
> To: hendrik at topoi.pooq.com; m3devel at elegosoft.com
> Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:22:21 +0000
> Subject: Re: [M3devel] 386?486?586?686?etc.?
> 
> 
> 
> Wow. What for? And with Modula-3? What OS?
> I think Pentium will be ok.
> I think ultimately, if people really need, we should have separate targets.
> As I've been saying, like: I386_FREEBSD_USERTHREADS, I586_FREEBSD, etc.
>  Esp. to enable easier "release engineering", such as when we do more cross builds,
>   adding new targets will be cheaper. But we'd want some sort of system
>   where if nobody downloads and installs and minimally tests a release, it is
>   in some low grade classification.
>   Certain ones we'd test automatically, like whatever we have available in Hudson.
>  
>  -Jay
>  
> > Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 22:58:48 -0500
> > From: hendrik at topoi.pooq.com
> > To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
> > Subject: Re: [M3devel] 386?486?586?686?etc.?
> > 
> > On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 11:59:11PM +0000, Jay K wrote:
> > > 
> > > Any opinions/counter-opinions on which processors we should support?
> > > 
> > > Presumably it doesn't vary per platform.
> > > 
> > > Like, it wouldn't be Linux/586 and FreeBSD/486 or such.
> > > 
> > > Unless maybe there is clear data about what the kernels support?
> > > 
> > > The atomic stuff is pushing things to i586.
> > > I believe before 486 and possibly 386 worked.
> > > 
> > > 686 is probably reasonable.
> > > 
> > > I think it is Pentium II or Pentium Pro or newer, stuff like 15 years old already.
> > 
> > I'm still running an old 100 MHz Pentium and using it on a daily basis.
> > 
> > Debian has dropped support for the 386 with, as far as I know, no 
> > complaints.
> > 
> > -- hendrik.
>