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Segin segin2005 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 4 21:54:49 CDT 2006


Tony Duell wrote:
> A point I forgot to mention...
> 
> 
>>I am a 16 year old high school student who works with computer daily. I 
>>perfer to work with older systems (386s are fun!) because they are just 
> 
> 
> I am curious as to what is 'fun' about 386s (I assume you mean PC 
> compatibles, and not, for example, Sequent multi-processor machines). 
> They're not old enough in general not to use ASICs (or at least the clone 
> chipsents) on the motherboard. You're not going to get schematics or BIOS 
> source listings in most cases. So the real low-level hardware/software 
> hackability of these machines would seem to be little different from a 
> more modern PC. 
> 
> To me, therefore they appear to be just a slower version of said modern 
> PC. They've got no real advantages that I can spot (unlike, say, one of 
> my PDP11s, or PERQs, or HPs, where (a) there is low-level documentation, 
> (b) they are repairable easilty to component level and (c) they run 
> rather diffeernt software to PCs). Can you enlighten me?
> 
> -tony
> 
My bedroom is about 9' by 12'. I honestly have nowhere to put a PDP-11, 
which would probably fall through the floor anyways (I live in a trailer).

And to note, my entire hardware collection is 32-bit x86, save a busted 
up Macintosh. My 386 is my oldest machine.

And note: If I want to play a video game, I'll do it on my main system. 
I mean, Doomsday/jDoom is rather nice for DOOM.

On a final note: My main desktop run Linux, my other box run Windows 
2000 with Microsoft's Interix subsystem installed, and my Dell runs FreeBSD.

Don't ask about the 486 or 386, I can't remember. Probably DOS.

-- 
The real problem with C++ for kernel modules is: the language just sucks.
	-- Linus Torvalds



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