freebsd stable - Sep 2020 - Cannot find announcement that min supported i386 CPU is now i686

## Charles Lecklider via freebsd-stable (freebsd-stable at freebsd.org):
> As you can see from objdump below, clearly a decision was made that 11.4
> would no longer support anything before a i686.
Given that the hardware notes
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.4R/hardware.html#proc-i386
explicitely claim 80486 compatibility, I'd guess this was not a
consciuous decision but a blunder which wasn't caught (perhaps as
hardware of that vintage is getting rare these days. That box
must be old enough to buy alcohol by now?).

Regards,
Christoph

-- 
Spare Space

On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 2:51 PM Christoph Moench-Tegeder <cmt at
burggraben.net>
wrote:
> ## Charles Lecklider via freebsd-stable (freebsd-stable at freebsd.org):
>
> > As you can see from objdump below, clearly a decision was made that
11.4
> > would no longer support anything before a i686.
>
> Given that the hardware notes
> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.4R/hardware.html#proc-i386
> explicitely claim 80486 compatibility, I'd guess this was not a
> consciuous decision but a blunder which wasn't caught (perhaps as
> hardware of that vintage is getting rare these days. That box
> must be old enough to buy alcohol by now?).
>
The default is to compile for i686.

However, you can still roll your own if you need anything back to i486.

Warner

On 2020-08-31 21:51, Christoph Moench-Tegeder wrote:
> Given that the hardware notes
> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.4R/hardware.html#proc-i386
> explicitely claim 80486 compatibility, I'd guess this was not a
> consciuous decision but a blunder which wasn't caught
Hmm.... I'd assumed that each release was at least *booted* on a real
486, but obviously not.
> (perhaps as
> hardware of that vintage is getting rare these days. That box
> must be old enough to buy alcohol by now?).
Yes, I first built it in 1998 IIRC; it ran Windows for a few years
(desktop, gaming) then FreeBSD from about 2002. It's been in nearly
continuous operation since, although I did have to replace the PSU last
year ;-)

-C

01.09.2020 6:50, Charles Lecklider via freebsd-stable wrote:
> On 2020-08-31 21:51, Christoph Moench-Tegeder wrote:
>> Given that the hardware notes
>> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.4R/hardware.html#proc-i386
>> explicitely claim 80486 compatibility, I'd guess this was not a
>> consciuous decision but a blunder which wasn't caught
> 
> Hmm.... I'd assumed that each release was at least *booted* on a real
> 486, but obviously not.
> 
>> (perhaps as
>> hardware of that vintage is getting rare these days. That box
>> must be old enough to buy alcohol by now?).
> 
> Yes, I first built it in 1998 IIRC; it ran Windows for a few years
> (desktop, gaming) then FreeBSD from about 2002. It's been in nearly
> continuous operation since, although I did have to replace the PSU last
> year ;-)
Just for the record, I still run AMD Geode-based FreeBSD 11.3-STABLE as my home
WiFi Access Point.
This fanless system has 500Mhz 32-bit only i586-class CPU, 1GB RAM (no swap),
two 100M wired NICs vr0/vr1 onboard and Atheros 5212 ath0 wireless mini-PCI card
(not PCI-E)
that supports multiple WLANs.

It has CompactFlash slot for ada0 occupied with 16GB CF card at boot device
(nanobsd, r/o mounted)
plus ada1 2.5" PATA HDD WDC WD2500BEVE (250G) as additional storage.

Until recently is also served as PPPoE client (mpd5 kernel level) for uplink
with ipfw nat being able to saturate 100MBit/s uplink connection despite of
NAT+PPPoE overhead.

CPU: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS (499.91-MHz 586-class CPU)
  Origin="AuthenticAMD"  Id=0x5a2  Family=0x5  Model=0xa  Stepping=2
  Features=0x88a93d<FPU,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,CX8,SEP,PGE,CMOV,CLFLUSH,MMX>
  AMD Features=0xc0400000<MMX+,3DNow!+,3DNow!>

Of course, its NanoBSD image is built with CPUTYPE=i586 as well as installed
packages.