Subj : FreeBSD 4.3-RC buffer issue To : Lawrence Garvin From : Tobias Ernst Date : Sun Apr 15 2001 05:56 am Hallo Lawrence! TE>> FreeBSD for sure works on a non-Pentium machine, LG> version 4.x? Yes. LG> Since it is a relatively recent release of an open-source LG> product, I'd be hesistant to recommend it will work on a LG> sub-Pentium processor unless somebody has either: LG> (a) specifically experienced success, or LG> (b) is willing to recompile the sources to ensure they are not LG> Pentium optimized -- cuz I suspect the shipping binaries are LG> optimized. I don't think they are. In order to create binaries that are no only Pentium optimized, but really use Pentium instructions which 486 or 386 CPU's do not understand, you would have to use a compiler which indeed does make use of Pentium-speicifc instructions. FreeBSD 4.x, however, is compiled with gcc 2.95.2, with just "-O" as optimization flags, and that version of the GNU compiler does not know anything about pentium instructions. In order to get such binaries, you would have to use pgcc, for example. But I don't know if this has been ever done at all, but for sure the distribution binaries are not shipped that way. The only critical part could be the FreeBSD kernel, which contains some assemblies which could make use of Pentium-type instructions. However, there are options in the kernel config, with which you can enable or disable use of those instructions, and given that the default GENERIC kernel of FreeBSD contains a cpu I386_CPU config statement (among others for 486, 586 and 686), it is obvious that they at least intend to support plain 386 type CPUs with this kernel. I have no such machines left, so I can only make theoretical arguments, but I really see no reason why FreeBSD 4.x would not work on those machines. FreeBSD's philosphy has always been to put stability in front before any sort of experimental fine-tuning. And even Linux is shipping with i386 binaries per default. If you want Linux with pgcc-compiled binaries you need to use one of the few special Linux distros that ship with this sort of binaries. Viele Gre, Tobias --- Msged/2 TE 06 (pre) * Origin: www.physcip.uni-stuttgart.de/tobi/projects.html (2:2476/418) .