From: bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) Subject: Re: Intel, the Pentium and Linux Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1993 14:51:56 GMT
In article <16BA393A6.INABU@ibm.rz.tu-clausthal.de> INABU@ibm.rz.tu-clausthal.de (Arnd Burghardt) writes:
>this i could do on a 80286 ;-)). The presentor promised it to be binary
>compatible to the i486, and I said I don't believe. I showed him a ONE_DISK_
>Linux-System (Emergency disk, with patched lilo to boot from disk), and said
>him : Convice me, boot this : No guts, no glory ! A he decided no glory.
>He won't let anybody touch his holy cows, and not even boot a suspect OS.
>>
>I thought by myself 'This is the coward of the day' and went back to earth.
I suspect he was more afraid of boot sector viruses than of Linux.
Intel would be making a MAJOR mistake if they lost binary compatibility ---
and you may be certain that they know it (why else does the 486 boot up in
8088-compatible mode?). Although I do wonder about the write-behind memory
cache: sounds like a good way to screw up access to memory-mapped controllers
to me. Would this have to be disabled globally on systems not rewritten for
the Pentium to disable it for those devices only?
++Brandon
-- Brandon S. Allbery bsa@kf8nh.wariat.orgIt's not too late to turn back from the "Gates" of Hell... Linux: the FREE 32-bit operating system, available NOW. Why waaaaaait for NT?