Re: arch/i386/boot rewrite, and all the hard-coded video cards

Jan Engelhardt
2007-05-02T18:25:23Z

On May 1 2007 15:41, Vlad wrote:
>H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> I'm rewriting the i386 setup code in C, instead of assembly,
>> and before I spend a very large amount of time translating
>> all the various card-specific probes, I want to ask the
>> following question...
>>
>> Does *anyone* care about these anymore?
>
>Yes, booting Linux on old i386/i486 hardware is still very useful for
>forensic purposes and recovering important data.

Not only that, but there's tons of fun involved. I mean, when was the
last time you ran a *recent* kernel from the 2006/2007 era on an
original i386 from 1990 with 3 bogomips? :) (Though I guess these
boxes don't have any 'modern' video besides 640x480x16 or 320x200x256
anyway.)

Jan
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