Re: Processors older than Intel Pentium 4
Am Sun, 17 Jul 2022 01:34:07 -0400
schrieb Timothy M Butterworth <timothy.m.butterworth@gmail.com>:
> All thanks for the responses but the situation is mute. Debian
> already migrated to i686 as the minimum supported version a few years
> ago. i686 supports Pentium 3 which is the oldest processor in use on
> this thread. Some internet sites say that i686 is Pentium 4 and later
> others say that it is Pentium 2 or later. Others say that i686 is
> Pentium Pro version 2 and later. If it is indeed Pentium Pro and
> later then a lot of older processors are still supported: Pentium 2,
> Pentium 3, Pentium M, Celeron, Pentium 4 etc.
But why the packages are still named i386 instead of i686?
Pentium Pro makes sense. The follower of the 485 was the Pentium (Penta
for 5 in Greek) internally named 586. The successor of that was the
Pentium Pro (686).
https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/686
The change of newer processors is that additional instructions like
MMX, SSE (Pentium 3/Athlon XP), SSE2 (Pentium 4 Willamette/Northwood)
and SSE3 (P4 Prescott) are supported.
Enforcing SSE could be an option (only Pentium 2 and Athlon (K7, without
XP) couldn't be used anymore. Although, both can still be used today
(if somebody has a Pentium 2 I might test it :-)).
Reply to: