CentOS - Jul 2005 - Big thanks for supporting i586 type machines.

While I know that, technically, the only i586 machines are the Pentium and 
Pentium MMX, it is still nice that I can use some headless AMD K6/2 machines 
I have lying around for CentOS 4.  Many thanks for the effort expended to get 
that working.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu

On Sat, 2005-07-30 at 17:55 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
> While I know that, technically, the only i586 machines are the Pentium and 
> Pentium MMX, it is still nice that I can use some headless AMD K6/2
machines
> I have lying around for CentOS 4.  Many thanks for the effort expended to
get
> that working.
The AMD K6-2+ don't run the i686 version?

I was fairly certain the Nx686 core (K6) was a 3-issue, superscalar i686
ISA compatible ALU + non-pipelined AMD x87 FPU slapped on?

In fact, I thought the primary difference between the Nx586 core and the
Nx686 core was the move from i386/486 ISA (i386 in early Nx586, i486 in
the latter K5s as it's TLB was made fully i486 ISA compatible) to i686
(all K6 units)?

They should run i686 ISA code the last time I checked.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   b.j.smith at ieee.org      http://thebs413.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  This is why someone who makes more than you always gets at
least the same, if not a bigger, tax cut.  Otherwise is impossible.

On Sat, 2005-07-30 at 17:55 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
> While I know that, technically, the only i586 machines are the Pentium and 
> Pentium MMX, it is still nice that I can use some headless AMD K6/2
machines
> I have lying around for CentOS 4. Many thanks for the effort expended to
get
> that working.
You are very welcome, we want to continue to support the i586 processors
and alpha processors ... and maybe sparc processors in the future.  All
which are not currently supported by the upstream provider.

Booting the i586 kernel in anaconda does sometimes cause some issues
with people who need to use "dd" drivers though.  So, when we put out
the CentOS 4 Single Server CD (hopefully quite soon), we will have a
straight i686 boot option there.  That should allow for an exact copy of
the "i686 only" boot process for people that need that option too.

At some point in the future (for upstream compatibility), we may make
the main CD-1 / DVD "i686 boot" only and provide an "i586"
Single Server
CD installer.  Those decisions are for another time.

We are striving to be the best OS out there, not just a copy of the one
of the best OSs out there :)

--
Johnny Hughes
<http://www.centos.org/>
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