[9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[ron minnich]

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I am wondering if there are any 32-bit users of the x86 port left. Has just
dropping pc/ ever been considered? Just got with pc64 and leave the old
stuff behind?

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Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Stanley Lieber]

> On Mar 8, 2025, at 7:54 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I am wondering if there are any 32-bit users of the x86 port left. Has just dropping pc/ ever been considered? Just got with pc64 and leave the old stuff behind? 

i still run several.

people use old hardware because it’s still perfectly adequate for many use cases. dropping 32-bit x86 would create an awful lot of e-waste.

sl

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[cinap_lenrek]

whats the point of this mail?

the 386 port works just fine, and its pretty low maintenance cost.

i'v been recently booting it on my old t23 to test some uhci
usb stuff. works fine.

also, any amd64 machine is backwards compatible to 386, you
can just /dev/reboot into a 9pc kernel and see. also recently
did that to test the fpu changes for note handlers.

don't worry about it.

the issues are more with all these half-assed arm32 and mips ports
that could take some love. and have a huge problem with hardware
availability. 386 is a paradise compared to that.

--
cinap

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[ori]

Quoth cinap_lenrek@felloff.net:
> 
> the issues are more with all these half-assed arm32 and mips ports
> that could take some love. and have a huge problem with hardware
> availability. 386 is a paradise compared to that.

and keeping those working is nice because it make sure that we
actually keep shit portable, and don't assume things like total
store ordering in the memory model, or 128-bit atomics, or other
crazy details.

(I should really get one of those little mips dev boards and set
it up for testing)

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[ron minnich]

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I was curious more than anything. All the x86-32 CPUs I worked with have
been EOL for almost 20 years, save the Intel Galileo, which was never used
widely. Sooner or later, all that 32-bit hardware stops working, and no new
hardware will be available; an AMD engineer once walked me through why they
wanted to stop making x86-32 parts, and this was in 2008.

It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than even
PAE can address. I have a feeling the day is coming when it will be
impractical to run 32 bit due to addressing limitations, e.g., systems with
4 thunderbolt ports, if 32-bit addressing is required, can only use 3 of
the ports; this is similar to what happened with Quadrics on DEC Alpha
systems back in the day. You could not run the supercomputing hardware if
you were limited to 32 bit addressing.

I suspect it's more a matter of if, not when, 32 bit support gets dropped,
just as it was for  the 16->32 transition back in the day (I was there for
that one too).

Anyway, thanks for the info. Didn't intend to cause upset.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 6:20 PM <ori@eigenstate.org> wrote:

> Quoth cinap_lenrek@felloff.net:
> >
> > the issues are more with all these half-assed arm32 and mips ports
> > that could take some love. and have a huge problem with hardware
> > availability. 386 is a paradise compared to that.
>
> and keeping those working is nice because it make sure that we
> actually keep shit portable, and don't assume things like total
> store ordering in the memory model, or 128-bit atomics, or other
> crazy details.
>
> (I should really get one of those little mips dev boards and set
> it up for testing)
>

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Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Kurt H Maier]

On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 08:21:57PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> 
> It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than even
> PAE can address.

the flip side of this situation is that these limitations are already
hitting the mainstream operating systems; most major linux distros have
had PAE as a hard requirement on 32-bit for years now.  this means you
can pick these computers up for peanuts on ebay etc, and they make great
9front machines (thinking here of the T23 cinap mentioned and the
contemperaneous X30/X40 systems).  the longer we can hang on to 32-bit
x86 support the better use we can make of these older systems being so
cheap and plentiful.

khm

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[adventures in9]

There are still a ton of embedded systems out there that will never
need more than 4GB of ram, or deal with thunderbolt.  Even the wifi
routers that have migrated over to arm64 are still well below needing
64bits.  There are some "retro" systems people are selling that use
32bit x86 chips meant for embedded use, for people who want to run DOS
games on bare metal.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 08:21:57PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> >
> > It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than even
> > PAE can address.
>
> the flip side of this situation is that these limitations are already
> hitting the mainstream operating systems; most major linux distros have
> had PAE as a hard requirement on 32-bit for years now.  this means you
> can pick these computers up for peanuts on ebay etc, and they make great
> 9front machines (thinking here of the T23 cinap mentioned and the
> contemperaneous X30/X40 systems).  the longer we can hang on to 32-bit
> x86 support the better use we can make of these older systems being so
> cheap and plentiful.
>
> khm

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[ron minnich]

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Great point, Kurt. Thanks.

On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 08:21:57PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> >
> > It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than
> even
> > PAE can address.
>
> the flip side of this situation is that these limitations are already
> hitting the mainstream operating systems; most major linux distros have
> had PAE as a hard requirement on 32-bit for years now.  this means you
> can pick these computers up for peanuts on ebay etc, and they make great
> 9front machines (thinking here of the T23 cinap mentioned and the
> contemperaneous X30/X40 systems).  the longer we can hang on to 32-bit
> x86 support the better use we can make of these older systems being so
> cheap and plentiful.
>
> khm
>

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Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[B. Atticus Grobe]

On Sat Mar 8, 2025 at 10:37 PM CST, adventures in9 wrote:
> There are still a ton of embedded systems out there that will never
> need more than 4GB of ram, or deal with thunderbolt.  Even the wifi
> routers that have migrated over to arm64 are still well below needing
> 64bits.  There are some "retro" systems people are selling that use
> 32bit x86 chips meant for embedded use, for people who want to run DOS
> games on bare metal.

Not using scavenged chips, either. There are still companies like DM&P
manufacturing everything from 486 to more modern x86-32 chips for use in
industrial controls systems that require an ISA bus. Until all of that old
industrial equipment is replaced, they'll keep producing those things.

>
> On Sat, Mar 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 08:21:57PM -0800, ron minnich wrote:
>> >
>> > It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than even
>> > PAE can address.
>>
>> the flip side of this situation is that these limitations are already
>> hitting the mainstream operating systems; most major linux distros have
>> had PAE as a hard requirement on 32-bit for years now.  this means you
>> can pick these computers up for peanuts on ebay etc, and they make great
>> 9front machines (thinking here of the T23 cinap mentioned and the
>> contemperaneous X30/X40 systems).  the longer we can hang on to 32-bit
>> x86 support the better use we can make of these older systems being so
>> cheap and plentiful.
>>
>> khm

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Thomas Nemeth]

Le dimanche 9 mars 2025 01:53:44 UTC+1, vous avez écrit :
> I am wondering if there are any 32-bit users of the x86 port left. Has
> just dropping pc/ ever been considered? Just got with pc64 and leave
> the old stuff behind?

    Yes there are :)

    I have quite a bunch of them with low footprint OSes and they do
    their job perfectly.

    As for Plan9, it's been on a x86-32 too for a few months as I reuse
    my old hardware that still works to play with it instead of throwing
    it to the bin.


Thomas.

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Thomas Nemeth]

Le dimanche 9 mars 2025 05:21:57 UTC+1, vous avez écrit :
> 
> It's getting more and more rare to see a system with less memory than
> even PAE can address. I have a feeling the day is coming when it will
> be impractical to run 32 bit due to addressing limitations, e.g.,
[...]
> I suspect it's more a matter of if, not when, 32 bit support gets
> dropped, just as it was for  the 16->32 transition back in the day (I
> was there for that one too).

    That /may/ be true for x86-based consumer electronics hardware.

    However in the embedded world, arm32 is still massively produced
    and used  (and I only talk about CPUs and MCUs -- not specific
    8b or 16b chips such as HS12X CAN MCU that we still use for
    example).

    Some industries are very inertial. To the point that we still
    sell products based on (stocked) 386sx.

Thomas.

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Shawn Rutledge]

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The first machine I tried 9front on was a PIII Toughbook I have lying around.  What stopped me is no built-in ethernet, and lack of support for Xircom RealPort PCMCIA cards of that vintage (RE-100 for example, but I think I have another model somewhere too).  It was a really common ethernet card at the time.  That’s a machine I don’t see a point in throwing out, because it’s so well-built and still works (last time I checked), although I don’t have any real use for it either.  It also has a touchscreen (but not multitouch) and a touchpad: two things that should work better in the window system and graphical applications, which I might actually get around to working on at some point.  But it’s ok, I have plenty of computers that run 64-bit Plan 9 just fine, and need the same sort of work to support the input devices better.

> On Mar 9, 2025, at 02:37, ori@eigenstate.org wrote:
> 
> (I should really get one of those little mips dev boards and set
> it up for testing)

I want to have 9front working on the GnuBees some day. I have the 3.5” model, and figured it would be a great fileserver some day, using some stable replacement for venti (Noam’s, maybe?) and some reliable and full-featured filesystem on top.  https://www.crowdsupply.com/niubi/personal-cloud-2 It has a MediaTek MT7621A which is kindof pathetic, only 512MB of RAM… so the OS and filesystem implementations need to be lightweight.  I.e. Plan 9 ought to be a better fit than Linux, especially Linux with ZFS.  I like ZFS, but it needs a lot of RAM.  But maybe some day we could have a RAID-5 or so filesystem on top of venti?  It’s just a matter of turning actual blocks into parity blocks and storing on other drives to get redundancy, I suppose.  I like this layering idea: one process handles blocks on disk, and another handles higher-level organization of the FS.

I don’t have much experience with troubleshooting OS/hardware integration yet, so I didn’t get around to trying yet.  Some day.  It does have a serial port console cable, so maybe that will work to get started poking around.

So if you want to try MIPS, I’d recommend a gnubee - you might help to get me moving too.  ;-)  It’s just more daunting than something that already is known to work.


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Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Pär Moberg]

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There is still a viable embedded world for 32-bit x86, the Vortex86 rage of
cpus is an example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex86

I think that they are used in points of sale systems. (And newly built
retro systems.)
//Pär

Den sön 9 mars 2025 10:37Thomas Nemeth <tnemeth@free.fr> skrev:

> Le dimanche 9 mars 2025 01:53:44 UTC+1, vous avez écrit :
> > I am wondering if there are any 32-bit users of the x86 port left. Has
> > just dropping pc/ ever been considered? Just got with pc64 and leave
> > the old stuff behind?
>
>     Yes there are :)
>
>     I have quite a bunch of them with low footprint OSes and they do
>     their job perfectly.
>
>     As for Plan9, it's been on a x86-32 too for a few months as I reuse
>     my old hardware that still works to play with it instead of throwing
>     it to the bin.
>
>
> Thomas.
>
>
>
>

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Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Blue-Maned_Hawk]

On 3/8/25 8:04 PM, Stanley Lieber wrote:
> 
> <snip/>
> 
> people use old hardware because it’s still perfectly adequate for many use cases. dropping 32-bit x86 would create an awful lot of e-waste.
> 
> <snip/>
> 

So the problem is insufficient governmental interest in funding eWaste 
recycling programs?

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On Mar 9, 2025, at 12:11, Blue-Maned_Hawk <bluemanedhawk@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 3/8/25 8:04 PM, Stanley Lieber wrote:
>> <snip/>
>> people use old hardware because it’s still perfectly adequate for many use cases. dropping 32-bit x86 would create an awful lot of e-waste.
>> <snip/>
> 
> So the problem is insufficient governmental interest in funding eWaste recycling programs?

There are 3 R’s.  The last R is the one you’re supposed to fall back on, only when you have unfortunately failed with the first two.  Semiconductor manufacturing has never been “green”, so I’m all for reuse as long as possible.  Compact and efficient OSes (and finding enough use cases that they are suited for) are good for that.  It’s also good practice to be ready in case a real technological collapse of some sort may be ahead of us.

Re: [9front] are there any 32-bit x86 platforms left?

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)]

ron minnich writes:

> I am wondering if there are any 32-bit users of the x86 port left. Has just
> dropping pc/ ever been considered? Just got with pc64 and leave the old
> stuff behind?

Yup!  I have some old mini-itx 32-bit machines that make fanstatic
terminals, and a couple of 32s still running as CPU servers, busy
collecting data and doing assorted bits of device control.

--lyndon