Linux Microcode Loading For x86 32-bit CPUs Being Cleaned Up & Corrected

[kylew77]

I'm surprised old Pentium III and 4 processors had micro code that could be loaded at boot time! I thought that was only a fairly recent addition to CPUs!

[Developer12]

No.

486s were dropped just roughly within the last year. The advantage of open source is not being thrown out like garbage so soon.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-i486-Linux-Possible-Drop

Now is not yet the time to go around cutting everybody off, otherwise I hear there's a provider in Redmond looking for you.

That thread didn't actually result in the dropping of 486 support.

[stiiixy]

I'm surprised old Pentium III and 4 processors had micro code that could be loaded at boot time! I thought that was only a fairly recent addition to CPUs!

I distinctly remember software patches for CPU (and x87 co-processors for pre, what? 386) issues, but, not much for the later stuff. We just got BIOS updates.

At least I thought. Guess it got pushed to the back of the news wagon.

[stiiixy]

I just pulled out a MSI VR700 laptop for gits n shiggles. 9bly thing not working is the WiFi, and I'm not even sure if if has one installed (havent checked physically). It runs perfectly fine thanks to the support of, well, people who do this for fun.

And good on em.

This MSI VR700 has a huge display and is a pleasure to drive. Within its 2GB limits 😁 Will have to figute out a nice swap system for it. SSD support is appreciated.

Next on my list (again!) is my Pentium 3 1200, with a PCI adapter with SATA ports, a nVidia AGP adapter, so on so forth. It has a two slot mobo which is a shame. Max RAM is 512, but hey, it's fun to do this stuff and realise sometimes, the world isnt the web, its requirements for ever increasing hardware requirements, and shit got done without it.

I wonder if AI can write assembly for all the old 32 bit CPU's on behalf of the dev's 🤔

[Eirikr1848]

This is really exciting! I have some Galileo boards with the mini PCIe to PCIe adapters with some Radeon R5 240 GDDR5 cards for basic video output that are used for some smart home displays.

I have some boards that I like to tinker with as well, and it would be fun to see if I can get more performance out of them with CachyOS's BORE and LTO kernel designs (but for 32-bit x86 Arch Linux).

On larger scales:

1) We received over 40 mini-ITX Intel D201GLY2A Celeron 220 motherboards in 2020 along with lots of other components. They ended up with AntiX, 1GB DDR2, 64GB SATA SSDs, and PCI (not PCIe haha) 1GB GDDR5 Radeon HD 5450 GPUs. They were paired with some super old Sony 800x600 LCD panels. PolyMC was installed for Minecraft. We gave them to a community organization to hand out to families, and some are still set up in their computer lab.

2) In 2019 We received Dell 810 laptops with Pentium M 2.26GHz CPUs, 2GB DDR2-533MHz, installed 128GB mSATA SSDs via an IDE-mSATA adapter, put in some Broadcom 802.11n cards and Manjaro 32... which was a pain in the rear having to teach everyone how to migrate to ArchLinux32. But hey. Someone showed me a pic of them watching YouTube on their integrated Radeon X600 128MB GPU on their external monitor while using some sort of light IDE (idk what it is) to work on python. So that's a thing.

When the right distro + packages combos are used for a specific usecase, the cost of "Free" paired with libre software can keep people connected and learning. Just because its too outdated for some, doesn't preclude it from being a blessing for others.

[stiiixy]

It's the ingenuity I respect in freebeerdom. Hacking togethor bits to get something previously unachievable (technically, physically, or monetarily) done, utilising tools at hand.

No ego involved.