[HN Gopher] The Last i486 Online
___________________________________________________________________
The Last i486 Online
Author : nazgulsenpai
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-03-16 11:49 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (last486.online)
(TXT) w3m dump (last486.online)
| Tepix wrote:
| Kinda neat. However i'm pretty sure there are still quite a few
| i386's online somewhere in the production department of various
| companies. The 80386 was produced until 2007, just like the 80486
| and even the much more recent Core Duo! It outlived the Pentium,
| which was only produced until 1999, the Pentium II (-2001) and
| the Pentium III (-2002).
| yummypaint wrote:
| I still use a cnc milling machine controlled by a 386. The only
| way to load gcode is via manual entry or floppy. However, it
| still gets the job done just fine for 90% of my needs.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| We've got an old cnc lathe that originally ran via a BBC
| Micro. It ended up being supported by linuxcnc so it might be
| possible to update your controller if it becomes annoying.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Looking at the problem a different way (maybe), you can buy
| BBC Basic and run it on modern x86 hardware.
| bluedino wrote:
| We're in a similar position and the PC runs DOS, with all of
| it's memory limitations. Any of our bigger pieces need to be
| run in multiple jobs as one job won't hold enough data to
| complete it.
| jonhohle wrote:
| While I don't recall ever having a problem with DOS, have
| you ever tried OS/2? We never attempted it due to the
| relative fragility of the system and lack of support, but
| thought it would have provided some more modern
| capabilities (this was back between 2000-2003).
| bluedino wrote:
| Unfortunately it wouldn't help since you'd still need to
| re-write the program (or at least port to a 32-bit
| compiler and use a DOS Extender), it's the 64k memory
| segmentation that's the issue
| Gracana wrote:
| You may be able to use a "drip feed" / DNC (direct numeric
| control) system, where NC code is fed to your machine from
| an external controller. At a previous company we had a
| modern PC on the network, with connections to ethernet COM
| port modules installed on the CNC machines. You'd choose a
| program for a machine, set up the machine controller to run
| a program from tape (or somesuch.. it depends on the
| controller), cycle start.. boom, you're running a large
| program over the network. It's a very handy solution.
| bluedino wrote:
| We have Moxas on almost all of our machines now. This one
| is a special case.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Sounds like Klipper but for cnc.
|
| The scheme is a huge win on 3d printers even though it
| adds a component to the system (generally a bad thing all
| else being equal, but all else is not equal).
|
| Even when you aren't talking about being stuck with some
| old proprietary and limited controller & firmware but can
| buy powerful new wide open controllers and load your own
| up to date open source firmware on them, it still ends up
| being even better to have the minimal klipper firmware on
| the controller and do all the real work on a host.
| snek_case wrote:
| There's probably a way to fit an SD card or flash drive in a
| floppy emulator?
|
| I'm curious now. Is that a 386 PC? Does it boot off of a
| small hard drive?
| Sakos wrote:
| There are adapters that let you use SD cards in place of
| floppy or IDE drive.
| genewitch wrote:
| compactflash is nearly pin compatible with ATA, i had
| several laptops repurposed as home routers with CF cards
| on little adapters. I could probably dig one out and take
| a picture.
|
| edit: shoot, i think i meant IDE, not ATA
| mnd999 wrote:
| Yep, my Amiga 1200 does exactly this. It's very tempting
| to put it on the internet.
| rvense wrote:
| ATA and IDE is the same thing. Usually CF cards will just
| work on adapters.
| ApolIllo wrote:
| Do they support hotplugging? afaik traditional floppies
| do and could be essential to workflows if you can avoid
| the costly reboot time.
| reaperducer wrote:
| There are adapters to use flash cards in real 31/2" floppy
| drives.
|
| I had a nice metal one made by Sony years ago. Flash card
| slides in one side, and there's a place for a button cell
| to power it. Then you just stick the whole thing into the
| floppy drive like a regular disk.
| Macha wrote:
| How many OS assumptions does it break to have a massively
| oversized capacity on a floppy drive?
|
| Or is it just using 1.44mb of a multi-GB SD card?
| kjs3 wrote:
| Often, these present as multiple floppy sized chunks for
| exactly the reason you cite. I don't know about the Sony
| described, but the Gotek I have has a little front panel
| that let's you select a numerical floppy unit that
| presents as a: or whatever.
| xxpor wrote:
| Neutron star density
| snek_case wrote:
| I'm assuming if it's a floppy emulator it just has floppy
| density, but you can emulate an IDE hard drive as well.
| jaclaz wrote:
| No, it is not a ATA/IDE (nor SATA) device, it is intended
| as a "direct replacement" for floppy drives (on
| embroidering machines, music instruments, CNC and
| similar), so it uses the 34 floppy connection (on PC-like
| hardware).
|
| There is - besides Gotek - an alternative which is open
| source and (if one wants to) DIY, the HxC, a few
| different possibilities:
|
| http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html
| Macha wrote:
| Oh, I may have been misunderstanding the parent comment
| but it sounded like they were saying it was an adapter
| that let you put flash memory devices of some sort into a
| regular floppy drive.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| There are exactly such devices.
| jaclaz wrote:
| The GoTEK (or similar) use several floppy images (each
| one 1.44 MB) and you can select manually which one to
| use.
|
| I think it depends on the model, but should be able to
| select among up to 100 or 1000 such images.
| Keyframe wrote:
| GoTek being most popular, yes.
| bluesquared wrote:
| My company still manufactures new products that use a 186 >.<
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I have a tray of i386EX33's in my parts bin. I figured I'd make
| something out of one eventually.
| giantrobot wrote:
| There's a bunch of 386s on the ISS. The main systems on the ISS
| are MDMs (multiplexer-demutiplexer) that communicate with
| "dumb" devices like sensors, actuators, and motors. The MDMs
| contain removable boards with a hardened 386, RAM, an EEPROM,
| and talk over a 1553 bus. Some MDMs live on the outside
| components of the station and some live inside. Astronauts can
| replace the CPU boards inside the MDMs if they burn out. The
| station has a few dozen MDMs each with four or more boards
| inside.
| RoboRy wrote:
| HackerNews crushes "the last" 486, then proceeds to smash all the
| other machines posted in the comments. It's like the day of
| reckoning for cute old hardware.
| johnklos wrote:
| We shall see ;)
|
| http://elsie.zia.io/
| danuker wrote:
| > It seemed that the ancient lan card was able to transmit
| packets but not able to receive.
|
| > After some inspection with a scope we found out that the RX
| trace after the transformer was missing / corroded and a patch
| was needed. A quick fix was to solder a wire and voila we we able
| to receive an IP address using the mTCP packet software for DOS
| and the DHCP client that comes with mTCP
|
| Mad debugging skillz!
| rkagerer wrote:
| Makes me want to get my old 8088 XT out and hack it into the web.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Well, it _was_ the last i486 online. All it took was posting it
| on HN.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Right?
|
| A 486 running a webserver behind CloudFlare returning a 502 Bad
| Gateway was the perfect "I don't know what I expected" moment.
| ibic wrote:
| Found this hilarious XD..
| Daunk wrote:
| Came looking for this comment, heh.
| projektfu wrote:
| If they put cloudflare in front, would it still be right?
| willcipriano wrote:
| You could put one of those tiny embedded microcontrollers
| behind cloudflare and it would be alright, provided the site
| is static. You might need a pro plan, but with the right
| cache headers each cloudflare origin would hit you once then
| serve many requests with that response.
| moltke wrote:
| Heh yeah, you don't even need to do TLS.
| mike_d wrote:
| If they put any CDN in front of it. Or another web server
| hosted in a datacenter.
|
| Cloudflare isn't anything unique or special aside from
| getting a bunch of VC funding so they could make the entry
| level plan free. Historically CDNs didn't do this because
| most sites don't need it, and abuse was common. However it
| clearly worked out for them in community name recognition.
| grishka wrote:
| Cloudflare is special because it regularly pisses me off
| with its captchas _that feel like actual work to prove my
| humanity_ or, even worse, outright non-bypassable "this
| website uses Cloudflare to protect itself from online
| attacks". I don't know how good of a CDN it is, but its
| reputation in my eyes is "something that meddles with my
| web browsing for no good reason when I least expect it".
| freitasm wrote:
| Cloudflare will only block inbound traffic in two
| situations:
|
| - if the request contains an exploit (the Cloudflare WAF)
| - if the website owner created a rule to block a request
|
| Most of the "this website uses Cloudflare to protect..."
| is a consequence of the second one.
|
| To make things easier Cloudflare has a switch to automate
| the second one - basically it just looks at IP threat
| levels based on honeypot services all around. Visitors
| receive a "level" based on IP, region, browser version,
| etc and if the level is above the switch (Low, High,
| Medium) then it's blocked.
|
| People go for this option - set the switch to High and
| block almosty everything. Other people will set it to Low
| or Off and then create their own firewall rules - for
| example a website owner can create a complex set of rules
| (in addition to the Cloudflare WAF exploit, or replacing
| it). See https://community.cloudflare.com/t/the-firewall-
| rules-we-fol... for an example.
|
| People will see the page sayng "Cloudflare blocked you"
| when in fact was most likely the website owner.
| freitasm wrote:
| Any CDN. They just need to set the cache header right - or
| set to cache everything.
| kloch wrote:
| Back in January 2000 I set up an Atari 800 as a web server with a
| 3com CS-210 terminal server as the TCP interface.
|
| The Atari had no problems keeping up with several requests per
| second even after being Slashdotted since all of the expensive
| TCP stuff was offloaded.
|
| There was a 16-bit hit counter on the page that overflowed and
| the CS-210 would crash after a day or so but otherwise it worked
| surprisingly well.
|
| https://kevinloch.com/atari/
| wumms wrote:
| Another one [0] (discussed 2 month ago [1])
|
| [0] http://486servu.dy.fi/
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29959129
| kjs3 wrote:
| Thanks for that. Never heard of the lEEt/OS that this one is
| running but looks like an interesting toy.
| smm11 wrote:
| I'm tempted to post the address of my DEC running NeXT ...
| ForOldHack wrote:
| We could easily melt that down too.
| sgt wrote:
| It would literally turn into soup.
| Apreche wrote:
| An Apple ||gs getting online is pretty commonplace, so a 486
| isn't that impressive or rare. Definitely far from the last.
| zhte415 wrote:
| (2021)
|
| And it's still online in 2022! http://last486.online/status
| Sakos wrote:
| I can't access it. Have we killed it already?
| guessbest wrote:
| It comes and goes depending on the load.
| ck2 wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220316115827/http://last486.onl...
|
| http://google.com/search?q=cache:http://last486.online/
|
| (not saved/working http://archive.today/http://last486.online/ )
| yazantapuz wrote:
| It's dead, Jim.
| deepspace wrote:
| I still remember when the engineering company I worked at
| obtained its first 486 PC - through acquisition of another
| company, no less.
|
| We reverently talked about "the 486" and it was stored behind a
| locked door. Only the most CPU-intensive jobs would be deemed
| worthy of CPU time on the beast.
|
| And then the CAD department bought a whole bunch of 486s to do
| PCB layout, and the mystique was gone.
| jscheel wrote:
| I still remember asking for a mathematical co-processor for my
| birthday so I could run CAD at home (my family owned a tool and
| die company, so I got to see all the cool tech they were
| using).
| jjkaczor wrote:
| My first job was working for a small retail/VAR shop - just me
| and my engineering-background boss/owner who specialized in
| CAD/CAM transitions for manufacturing. (Plus blueprint
| scanning/digitalization and vector conversion)
|
| Our very first order came in for an i486 - so excited, I
| grabbed all the components, headed into the backroom and built
| the machine.
|
| Once it was all together - I eagerly threw the power switch
| on... Darkness... the breaker blew, the lights were out...
|
| Well... turns out, I had rotated the CPU 180 degrees from it's
| required position. OMG... here I am a teenager and now I am
| going to have to pay for a $1200+ part?
|
| My boss calmly reseated the CPU correctly, and... it worked!
|
| We did a 5-day burn-in/benchmark with no problems, and never
| had any callbacks from the customer.
| dpwm wrote:
| > Well... turns out, I had rotated the CPU 180 degrees from
| it's required position. OMG... here I am a teenager and now I
| am going to have to pay for a $1200+ part?
|
| I did something similar with an i486 DX4-100; I wasn't so
| lucky: the power supply held up, the CPU smoked and it took
| out the motherboard. Thankfully this was well into the
| Pentium-II era, but it was still pretty devastating. If I
| recall correctly, it just slotted in the wrong way like it
| was meant to go; I guess modern CPU sockets have fixed that.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I guess modern CPU sockets have fixed that.
|
| Kinda. All that's stopping you from inserting a Ryzen CPU
| wrong way around is a 0.3mm copper pin that exists in one
| corner, but not the other. So there's still that worry of,
| "should I force it because it needs a bit of force, or
| should I not force it because I'll break it?" I think Core
| CPUs are the same way.
| vizzier wrote:
| Seems like knowing when to apply force is half the battle
| of building a PC. For reference, modern CPU installation
| should require NO force if done properly. Gravity alone
| should let settle into the socket. Gently attempting to
| twist it should yield no movement if it is seated
| correctly.
| qball wrote:
| Intel CPUs are not the same way, and haven't been for
| nearly 20 years. The pins are on the motherboard, and the
| CPU has lands; hence the name 'Land Grid Array' (starting
| with the LGA775).
|
| Most of AMD's CPUs are still of the PGA (Pin Grid Array)
| type; but it's worth noting that this isn't true for
| Socket AM5, which is itself an LGA socket, and the socket
| for the Threadrippers has been LGA since its inception.
| bitwize wrote:
| Back in the day, if you were a top tier animation, video game,
| graphics, or CAD shop and you could afford it, you bought an
| SGI workstation. _One_ workstation. For your entire company if
| you were small and boutique enough. They cost tens to hundreds
| of thousands of dollars a pop, but they could do 3D accelerated
| graphics like no other computer could.
|
| Today even the rinky-dink Intel GPU in an HP Stream has more
| oomph than those SGI beasts, and people doing visualization
| work just buy PCs with NVIDIA cards. They can get pricey, but
| not top-end SGI pricey.
| dhosek wrote:
| My first time I worked on an SGI workstation, I remember
| running TeX on it. I thought nothing happened because the
| process that took around 10 seconds on my 486 tower ran so
| quickly that the window didn't even scroll: It just repainted
| with the new output.
| timthorn wrote:
| I did my work experience at SGI the week that the first
| Reality Center was opened. A side room held racks of Power
| Onyx and Infinite Reality2 tin to drive the wraparound
| projection screen, and there were some very impressive demos.
|
| Six years later I was at a university seminar where one of
| the exact same demos was shown off, running on a laptop.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There were SGI workstations in the late 1990s-early 2000s
| with the equivalent of a full computer cluster inside; the
| IRIX operating system running on them managed to expose a
| single-system programming model where a single global address
| space and shared-memory support was provided by _software_ ,
| abstracting away the separate per-node RAM in the cluster.
|
| Linux is still quite far from doing anything like that,
| though container support provides a required foundation for
| any such feature, and is already paving the way for
| intermediate steps such as process checkpointing and
| migration across hosts.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I wonder what a Vortex86SX counts as. It's not Intel, it's closer
| to a Pentium, but lack a FPU.
| porbelm wrote:
| Did it explode
| maxicarlos08 wrote:
| Yes
| robin_reala wrote:
| Now that I think about it, my first visit to the Internet was on
| a 486 (though I'd been using the same machine to access BBSes
| beforehand). I guess that'd be the same for a bunch of people
| here.
| BobMcBob wrote:
| Yep, same here.
|
| Rocked a Packard Bell 486DX2 66mhz, with 8MB Ram, and a 400MB
| HDD. Came with a 14,4kbps modem that I upgraded to 33.6kbps.
| BBSes from the free newspapers is what got me "online" and
| eventually I was able to PPP over WinSock to get my Windows
| 3.11 on to the REAL internet.
|
| I miss those times.
|
| Nothing like spending hours downloading a few early MP3s in
| 94-95, and having to play them back at 1/2 or 1/4 quality
| because the 486 couldn't keep up (and even then running out of
| cache 60-70 seconds in and paused for it catch back up).
| kingcharles wrote:
| > Nothing like spending hours downloading a few early MP3s in
| 94-95, and having to play them back at 1/2 or 1/4 quality
| because the 486 couldn't keep up (and even then running out
| of cache 60-70 seconds in and paused for it catch back up).
|
| LOL. I used to have to decompress them into 40MB WAV files to
| play them. My whole hard drive was 50MB.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Am486DX4/100 couldn't run 44k/Stereo, but at 22k it would
| play it in a ... single mode (Win9x with WinAmp) and at 11k
| you could even try to do something easy, like writing text in
| Notepad.
|
| Though I preferred to just play MIDIs and do my things.
| runjake wrote:
| We have a SPARC IPX online (albeit firewalled from the Internet)
| doing production tasks for $reasons. It's been online since about
| 1992. The hard drive sounds like a metal grinder.
|
| Anyone else have an IPX or older online for non-novelty purposes?
|
| Edit: 30 years now!
| sgt wrote:
| I ran a SparcStation 5 until about 2006. About 30 users.
| mkovach wrote:
| I use to run an uptime server (http://uptime.openacs.org) and
| a tiny url server (http://myturl.com) on an old SparcStation
| pizza box until 2006, when the final hard drive I was going
| to buy for the best finally dead.
| sgt wrote:
| That's hilarious. I also ran a tiny URL server off my SS5.
| Nowadays that service would have been cloud based and cost
| $1k/mo in AWS costs for the same amount of users.
| eljimmy wrote:
| Well now I feel compelled to install a web server on mine. I've
| got a fully functional i486DX2 66Mhz, though the PSU is a little
| shoddy.
|
| Maybe we can create an old school banner network linking all
| these old computers together :D
| genewitch wrote:
| how many amps does the PSU draw at the wall under full load?
| there's probably something like a pico/nano PSU that will work
| with AT (those were AT, right?)
| leeter wrote:
| Me: "Surely the Linux Kernel has build options for x86 that
| includes no-FPU"
|
| 20 minutes later: "Oh right they removed i386 as a target because
| it sucked and wasn't maintained that includes i486... so now
| you'd have to target a Pentium or higher"
|
| But seriously the Linux kernel does support not having an FPU...
| just not on x86 as best I can tell.
| amluto wrote:
| The Linux kernel has an x87 emulator.
| leeter wrote:
| It does... and doing a quick search of the kernel source it's
| not actually used for anything I can't find it referenced
| outside of itself. There is FPU emulation for m68K that is,
| but x87 is not.
| cesarb wrote:
| > and doing a quick search of the kernel source it's not
| actually used for anything I can't find it referenced
| outside of itself.
|
| It's being used here: https://lxr.missinglinkelectronics.co
| m/linux+v5.16/arch/x86/...
|
| Whenever the kernel gets a "device not available"
| exception, and CONFIG_MATH_EMULATION is set (which is the
| case when the kernel is compiled for a 486SX), and the CPU
| does not have a real FPU, and the "emulation" flag on CR0
| is set, it calls the FPU emulator.
| leeter wrote:
| Good to know I was looking in the wrong spot, I was
| looking for what looked like the most likely header other
| parts of the code would be using.
| amluto wrote:
| Ah, you got faked out. The kernel doesn't really use FPU
| even in modern CPUs. The emulation is for userspace's
| benefit, not the kernel's
| mywittyname wrote:
| > But seriously the Linux kernel does support not having an FPU
|
| How does this work? Do they use software emulation of floating
| point calculations?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Perhaps
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embeddable_Linux_Kernel_Subs...
| ?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I believe that the latest kernels still support CONFIG_M486
| though one would have to check. Even i386 support was only
| removed because it led to complications in the SMP support
| code, so it could likely be readded for non-SMP configs (most
| if not all 80386 systems are single-processor). It's a matter
| of doing the work (making sure that it does not inconvenience
| support for other archs), posting it to LKML and committing to
| maintaining it.
| [deleted]
| cestith wrote:
| There's always NetBSD, and FreeDOS can get online just fine.
| Both are currently maintained.
| http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Networking_FreeDOS_-_...
|
| There are also older Linux distribution images available. OS/2
| or one of the two commercial spin-offs would have networking
| support. Windows 95 will run slowly on a 486 but may require
| the coprocessor. I don't recall about that. Windows 3.1 or 3.11
| with Trumpet Winsock will get online.
|
| I have a couple of Portmaster 2e IP to serial servers. When I
| was in the ISP field before the 56k DSP-based integrated
| systems, we used to hook modems up to devices like that to
| provide dial-up service. I can hook up around 40 systems that
| have RS-232 ports to the Internet that way.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| The kernel does support the 486[0], it is just looks like some
| "486"s were really 386s. 486SX (which is supported) has its FPU
| disabled so it most likely uses the x87 emulation.
|
| [0]
| https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
| danbee wrote:
| If I remember rightly, the 487SX was actually a full 486DX
| processor that, when installed, disabled the existing 486SX
| CPU.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Confirmed. The 487SX was a full 486DX with FPU and caches.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5471932
|
| Nice to hear confirmation of something I saw with my own
| eyes.
| leeter wrote:
| I can't find support for those flags outside of two files,
| I'm 90% sure the kernel requires CMPXCHG8B which isn't
| supported on 486 iirc
| cesarb wrote:
| > I can't find support for those flags outside of two files
|
| Most of or all of the uses of those M486/M486SX/etc flags
| are on that file itself. For instance, it sets
| CONFIG_X86_INVD_BUG whenever either CONFIG_M486SX or
| CONFIG_M486 is set. It's those other flags that are used
| elsewhere; as you can see, there are many of them.
|
| > I'm 90% sure the kernel requires CMPXCHG8B which isn't
| supported on 486 iirc
|
| I believe CMPXCHG8B is CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG64, which as you
| can see on that file, is not set for M486/M486SX. As you
| can see searching for that, there is support for CMPXCHG8B
| emulation (see for instance https://lxr.missinglinkelectron
| ics.com/linux+v5.16/arch/x86/...) on CPUs which do not have
| that instruction (complete with an use of the
| "alternatives" mechanism to automatically replaces the
| emulation calls with the real CMPXCHG8B instruction when
| it's available on the current CPU).
| TedShiller wrote:
| It's offline
| compsciphd wrote:
| not anymore :) (as of 13:22 UTC), though I expect it will come
| back. eventually.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| There's still a Sinclair ZX81 online:
|
| http://zx81-siggi.zx-team.org/index.html (previous HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25638936)
|
| and a Commodore 64: https://www.tfe.c64.org/
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Way to go, you just set fire to a Sinclair and a Commodore, you
| monster.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| There used to be a Mac Plus on the internet ( 8Mhz 68000 )
| called Camneerg, or Green mac backwards, at L0ft.
|
| "BTW, this Mac Plus is runing the web server you are reading
| this page from right now." Its still up.
|
| https://www.spacerogue.net/Camneerg/Camneerg.html
| bartread wrote:
| And, amazingly after this post, it's _still_ up.
| forum_ghost wrote:
| not anymore. both links down.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| "That was a priceless Steinway." "Not anymore." - Inspector
| Clouseau.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Yeah, you lot wreck my poor little Alpha Micro Eagle 300
| (68030) every time it gets posted here. It's like you _like_
| these old beasts or something. ;)
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Got any more we can DDoS? :-)
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Down for me, but you can still see the content on archive.org:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20220316115827/http://last486.onl...
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| That didn't last long :-(
| zinekeller wrote:
| Hmm? It loads fine for me.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Page loads fine for me
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's nowhere near as impressive, but I kept a PII running as a
| server for a very long time.
|
| The Pentium Pro-PIII era was an interesting time because USB had
| just shown up, PCI was commonplace, FPUs and SIMD were now
| standard. Many x86 Linux builds target i686, so it's the the
| oldest PC you can reasonably run modern Linux on without much
| hassle.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that modern software projects like Firefox need
| special patches to work on PIII-era hardware. The Debian
| versions of Firefox for i686 do include these patches, so they
| ought to work provided that the system has enough RAM.
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