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<taps> So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

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    <taps> So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

    Well, looks like they did it.

    Rust, the "secure" language used for firefox and librsvg, no longer work on AthlonXP, Athlon, Pentium III (Katmai and older), Pentium II, and anything older. Because of rust's decision to call "i686" at least a Pentium 4 (with SSE2), these older machines have been left out to pasture. Not sure how hard it is to remove SSE2 instructions from rust's instruction scheduler and still produce a working binary...

    I've been depending on these old machines to keep on working as they still share the same instruction set...or seemingly do, until people actually force one to have SSE2.

    librsvg is significant as it's a component of gtk+ -- which is used by xfce4 and gnome desktop environments. Looks like KDE or lxde may need to be looked at, and even KDE with its dependency on QT5 and QT5's insistence on having SSE2 instructions, though that can be worked around.

    So I guess the original P4, Pentium-M, Pentium III (Tualatin), Core Solo, or perhaps all 32-bit machines are next on the chopping block?

    #2
    Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

    While I do have legacy systems with PIIIs in sporadic use, they're all Coppermine or Tualatin (more recent than Katmai). I have Athlon 32 T'bird and Thoroughbred XP boxes, but running older OSes (RH9 and so on, with no net connectivity). The direct impact to me is limited for now, but I suppose the writing is on the wall for i686 and IA32 in general - it's headed for EOL, and migration to AMD64 is inevitable.

    Edit: I think all the (very few) Core Solo SKUs were x86-64 - Merom/Conroe single cores, but I could be mistaken. The last IA-32 core was probably Yonah, a dual-core, and some LGA775 P4s without x86-64 enabled.
    Last edited by linuxguru; 02-09-2021, 02:05 AM.

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      #3
      Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

      Actually I probably should have said Coppermine and older, forgot about those... then again not sure if Coppermine has SSE2 or not. I know my Tualatins have SSE2 among the P4s.

      It's unfortunate this is even Linux, and even for a source based distribution (like Gentoo) if the source stops maintaining it, still screwed...

      I actually still have 32-bit machines in active duty, one is a VM, other is an Atom. I think all my other 32-bit setups aren't in primary service any more. My old 32-bit laptop is a Pentium-M so at least that has a little more life with SSE2.

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        #4
        Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

        Atom is 64bit

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          #5
          Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

          Atom N270 (and N280) does not support x86_64, and it was a very popular CPU in netbooks around 2008-2010. The early (well, up to 2013) Atom Z series and some others didn't support it either but they were less relevant.

          Core Solo and Core Duo were also missing x86_64 support, it came back only on Core 2. A bunch of laptops can be upgraded but not all (BIOS limitations).

          32-bit support is also becoming more and more abandoned in the Linux world. The only mainstream distribution that still actively supports it is Debian as far as I know (but it's not the most user-friendly), and there have been talks to drop it for a while already. A good bunch of proprietary applications already dropped it (so without sources you can't do anything about it), and even free/open-source ones (with convoluted build process and hardcoded optimizations) are starting to move away from it.
          Last edited by piernov; 02-09-2021, 05:24 AM.
          OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

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            #6
            Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

            Rust?
            Cap Datasheet Depot: http://www.paullinebarger.net/DS/
            ^If you have datasheets not listed PM me

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              #7
              Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

              That includes Coppermine, too! Katmai was pretty much a Pentium II with a different name. At best, was a Pentium II with SSE.
              ASRock B550 PG Velocita

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                #8
                Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                Hmm... maybe not, does Tualatin have SSE2? Might not after all, mine's not set up at the moment...
                Coppermine apparently does not, but I don't have any to check.

                NOPE. All Pentium III's are now obsolete due to rust - Tualatins do not have SSE2.
                Last edited by eccerr0r; 02-09-2021, 01:11 PM.

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                  #9
                  Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                  My Athlon XP got retired to "retro" use (or at least the small amount of old stuff that will run on VIA/S3 integrated graphics) a long time ago. I have to reinstall Windows every few weeks just to keep SSE support for some reason, but SSE instructions always work in Linux. Even if it supported SSE2, it's too slow for modern stuff, especially since I have the 1400+.

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                    #10
                    Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                    Originally posted by Uranium-235 View Post
                    Rust?
                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(...ming_language)

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                      #11
                      Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                      ...and who uses anything that old/slow for things that aren't retro?

                      I don't think my retro gamers will suddenly stop working...
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                        #12
                        Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                        FWIW, this post created from THIS BUILD, a slot-2 P3 Xeon (cascades cores) from firefox 12; no less than a 3DFX voodoo3500 providing the video....one of my favorite and most unusual retro builds. It's still working!!
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                          #13
                          Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                          Originally posted by Topcat View Post
                          FWIW, this post created from THIS BUILD, a slot-2 P3 Xeon (cascades cores) from firefox 12; no less than a 3DFX voodoo3500 providing the video....one of my favorite and most unusual retro builds. It's still working!!
                          What are you using it for?
                          Cap Datasheet Depot: http://www.paullinebarger.net/DS/
                          ^If you have datasheets not listed PM me

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                            #14
                            Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                            Originally posted by Uranium-235 View Post
                            What are you using it for?
                            Look at the specs of the build, and I'll give you three guesses....

                            Then look at the hardware in question for this thread and let me know who's using that era of hardware for anything but novelties & nostalgic purposes.
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                              #15
                              Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                              My Athlon XP is currently the "you can't overclock a laptop" system.

                              Most of my old stuff is being used to collect dust until I get replacement optical drives. I only have one working IDE optical drive, and it's in my Pentium II laptop. I tried CD emulation software, and it wouldn't play music.

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                                #16
                                Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                                Up until this point the whole point is these machines used to be able to run everything that modern machines could run... therefore they could be spares... until they started prohibiting that by adding unnecessary instructions into the code stream.

                                Plus even today I don't think people would consider GUIs to require mega horsepower to run, especially ones that look like WinXP or even Win95 era...

                                Disappointing, and not even running video or games - just a plain desktop environment that always had been running... until they wanted to add scalable vector graphics to the icons that they were so worried to have security holes but as a side effect requires unnecessary instructions, and suddenly things won't work anymore.

                                I do wonder how bad it would be to emulate these instructions, can't imagine there should be that many of them, just to render a few icons?

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                                  Good thing I moved my firewall off of the old Advantech system that served me faithfully for over 3 years. The day Debian drops i686 is the day my APCUPSD server is permanently firewalled off from the Internet.
                                  Don't buy those $10 PSU "specials". They fail, and they have taken whole computers with them.

                                  My computer doubles as a space heater.

                                  Permanently Retired Systems:
                                  RIP Advantech UNO-3072LA (2008-2021) - Decommissioned and taken out of service permanently due to lack of software support for it. Not very likely to ever be recommissioned again.
                                  Asus Q550LF (Old main laptop, 2014-2022) - Decommissioned and stripped due to a myriad of problems, the main battery bloating being the final nail in the coffin.


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                                  - 1993 Gateway 2000 80486DX/50 - Fully Operational/WIP
                                  - 2004 Athlon 64 Retro Gaming System - Indefinitely Parked
                                  - Main Workstation - Fully operational!

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                                    #18
                                    Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                                    I suspect Gentoo will run 32-bit for a while, surprised sparc hppa and alpha still are supported...

                                    Then again NetBSD will stick around, alas it doesn't matter if no applications are supported. Gosh rust is really making me mad.

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                                      #19
                                      Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                                      I think that dropping support for 15+ years old CPU-s is normal. Even if they are supported, they are mostly useless today.
                                      It is the same as asking why you cant run Windows10 on Intel486. After 2010 CPU-s before Pentium IV became obsolete.
                                      Today you can buy at least Dual Core x64 capable system with 4-8GB of RAM for 50$ or less.
                                      Last edited by televizora; 02-10-2021, 12:05 PM.
                                      Useful conversions. I don't "speak" imperial. Please use metric, if you want to address me.
                                      1km=1000m=100000cm, 1inch=2.54cm, 1mile=1609.344meters, 1ft=30.48cm 1gal(US)=3.785liters, 1lb=453grams, 1oz=28.34grams

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                                        #20
                                        Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

                                        Originally posted by televizora View Post
                                        Today you can buy at least Dual Core x64 capable system with 4-8GB of RAM for 50$ or less.
                                        [ citation request ]

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