A more accurate estimate of the dinosaur's power usage would be 20-30W -- assuming the dinosaur was running as a headless server (graphics processing accounted for the bulk of power consumption in desktop machines of the era). In fact, 486 machines tended to use about half the power of their later counterparts (though this was likely more a function of clock speed than architecture).

At the 13 cents per KW-hr I pay, I estimate it would take two to three years to recoup the cost of a Cubieboard over a repurposed 486 curbside rescue, assuming I did not employ any wake-on-law hibernation.

And if one wants to consider the environmental impact, they should take into account the resources required in manufacturing a new device -- there are zero resources required to recycle an existing machine.

I just need to know the order to build the packages. I guess LFS and that GCC thread can help me.

CMOV is mandatory to qualify as i686 compatible CPU, without CMOV those CPUs are only i586, even if they implement every other part of the i686 ISA.

Not according to the specification (PDF):

The CMOVcc instructions are new for the Pentium® Pro processor family; however, they may
not be supported by all the processors in the family. Software can determine if the CMOVcc
instructions are supported by checking the processor’s feature information with the CPUID
instruction

I stand corrected.

To those who would want an i686 Slackware

Salix Mate 14.1 has just been released in addition to Salix Xfce 14.1.

See here for the downloads. On the same page you'll find a link to the repository mirrors, that host Salix (and Slackware) packages.

Of course Salix is not Slackware, but it is fully binary compatible with Slackware, so Salix packages should be usable on Slackware (I didn't try though, thus I offer no guarantee of any kind :-).

Oh, I almost forgot what matters to you: there is an i686 version ;)

Where does it say that the Salix downloads are i686? All the torrent downloads say i486, unless I am missing something obvious.

Edit: Ok, the titles say it but the links do not. Anything else to back up the fact that this is a i686 rebuild. Salix have never done a full rebuild before AFAIK.

The only i686 packages are mozilla-firefox and libreoffice packages. Everything else is i486. Since they have some packages at i686 they must say that the distro only (completely) works on i686. Hence the titles on the download links. I also suspect that mozilla-firefox and libreoffice are only i686 because they are binary repacks. Nothing to see here.

Aww, beat me to it. I'll further expand that by saying the act of recycling also requires energy of one form or another, and is usually not "green" if it ends up in China, Nigeria, etc. Also consider that 13 cents/kWh is expensive in the winter, and I'm guessing average in summer; it also provides heat in winter.

Anyway, I have some experience running newer Slackware on older machines, and one thing that provides a surprising boost is to compile a kernel for that particular machine. This has become quite a labor in recent years with the exponential explosion in drivers and options (many newer ones which I don't understand what they do, usually with memory management and other esoteric and often VERY low level stuff), but, when done correctly, will not only improve boot time but you'll notice programs run faster, too: I think this is due to relieving cache pressure, or even DRAM pressure if in a low memory environment; that said, I've noticed improvements, though not as great, on newer machines.

Hope this helps, Mike

You are right, I stand corrected. In fact gapan told me that through IRC when I told him I had posted about the new Salix release here:So, shame on me.

But, just wondering: maybe people could actually find Salix packages faster just because I told them they are i686 :D

Going the other direction, maybe another reason for an i686-only Slackware be so that it can be used inside a i686-only VM, like the one in libvirt/QEMU-KVM? Though I suppose the "performance" increase is negligible, being in a VM and all...