Comments on: Finnix: On the Forefront of Ancient Hardware Technology http://blog.finnix.org/2006/04/02/finnix-on-the-forefront-of-ancient-hardware-technology/ Finnix development weblog Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:34:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Nazo http://blog.finnix.org/2006/04/02/finnix-on-the-forefront-of-ancient-hardware-technology/comment-page-1/#comment-51 Nazo Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:27:17 +0000 http://www.finnix.org/blog/2006/04/02/finnix-on-the-forefront-of-ancient-hardware-technology/#comment-51 Hmm, you only tested the Cyrix for the 486? The reason I ask is because, to be brutally honest, Cyrix processors are known to sport a few bugs here and there versus the competition. Even AMD, which wasn't exactly what you'd call high quality in those days still had a better 486 from what I've seen of them. Oh well, last time I had a 486 was in the early 90s or so personally. I haven't seen anything less than a Pentium 1 since then, and the only Pentium 1 I had seen was an absolutely ancient Toshiba Satellite Pro from around 95 or so (I'm not kidding, it was actually a decade old and still running before I sold it.) You had to use a boot floppy rather than CD to boot anything on it though. Actually, I'm rather wondering how you booted Finnix on that 486. It must have had one heck of a BIOS... I do wonder if SMP support is needed though. Don't get me wrong, thanks to dual core chips, SMP has suddenly become even more popular lately, and my main diagnostic system (eg the thing I now run Finnix on most of the time) is an ancient P3 SMP system, but, for Finnix's purposes, not many things you'll be using will really take advantage of SMP, right? I don't know, maybe you can multitask like compressing something while doing something else, but, I can't really think of what else I'd be doing at least. Technically the UP kernel is supposed to be ever so slightly more efficient on a UP system too, or at least so they keep saying, though I have never personally benchmarked or anything and I suppose the difference is minimal really. What do you think? Is SMP really needed? Maybe it makes more sense to overlay SMP stuff? Hmm, you only tested the Cyrix for the 486? The reason I ask is because, to be brutally honest, Cyrix processors are known to sport a few bugs here and there versus the competition. Even AMD, which wasn't exactly what you'd call high quality in those days still had a better 486 from what I've seen of them. Oh well, last time I had a 486 was in the early 90s or so personally. I haven't seen anything less than a Pentium 1 since then, and the only Pentium 1 I had seen was an absolutely ancient Toshiba Satellite Pro from around 95 or so (I'm not kidding, it was actually a decade old and still running before I sold it.) You had to use a boot floppy rather than CD to boot anything on it though. Actually, I'm rather wondering how you booted Finnix on that 486. It must have had one heck of a BIOS...

I do wonder if SMP support is needed though. Don't get me wrong, thanks to dual core chips, SMP has suddenly become even more popular lately, and my main diagnostic system (eg the thing I now run Finnix on most of the time) is an ancient P3 SMP system, but, for Finnix's purposes, not many things you'll be using will really take advantage of SMP, right? I don't know, maybe you can multitask like compressing something while doing something else, but, I can't really think of what else I'd be doing at least. Technically the UP kernel is supposed to be ever so slightly more efficient on a UP system too, or at least so they keep saying, though I have never personally benchmarked or anything and I suppose the difference is minimal really.

What do you think? Is SMP really needed? Maybe it makes more sense to overlay SMP stuff?

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