Re: 486 still being sold NEW / was Re: Increasing minimum 'i386' processor
On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 04:44:03PM +0100, J.A. Bezemer wrote:
>
> On Sun, 20 Nov 2011, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> >On Sun, 2011-11-20 at 16:30 +0100, Kai Wasserbäch wrote:
> [..]
> >>Apart from that I wonder how many "embedded" x86 CPUs (instruction set < 586)
> >>are out there. Are they still sold in current products?
> >
> >As I said, Soekris still seems to have some for sale, but they are just
> >using up their remaining stock of CPUs.
>
> There still is a rather large market for 486-class systems, it's
> just not very visible to the average consumer. It's the industrial
> PCs (IPC), for example the PC/104 form factor. The first google page
> gives this:
[...]
> Now personally I'm not running these and I don't care much about 486
> systems, but I'd say that any dropping of support for these
> industrial boards should be considered really carefully.
Since we're theorising, rather than talking about actual users, my
theory is that these are sold as replacements for installed systems,
which will run the exact same software as the original - not Debian
7.0. It would be silly to start a new deployment reliant on parts
that have already been EOL'd.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
- Albert Camus
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