Now that I know my processor is an i686, I would like to compile all my code for that type. In /etc/profile I added the following lines to the top.
I'm using the alsa-driver-1.0.15 as my test. I used the .configure scripts with this option
./configure --with-cards=emu10k1x
I already had a previous compile to compare the files to, so I grabbed snd_timer.ko from /lib/modules/2.6.23.1/kernel/sound/acore and renamed it to snd_timer.ko2. Then, I grabbed the new snd_time.ko that was made recently and put them in the same directory. I did a cmp snd_timer.ko2 snd_timer.ko and it showed no difference. Is this to be expected? What should I try next?

When you do an
env|grep FLAG
from the shell where you invoke ./configure .... what do you see?

If the terminal you're working on is not an interactive login shell it
may not have inherited the values from /etc/profile



Cheers,
Tink

I get the following from env | grep FLAG
I change the environment variable to use pentium 3 just to see if it made a difference.

In that case maybe the compiler thinks that there's no call for
instructions specific to the CPU you want it to be using...

It's also possible that alsa-driver will refuse to compile
against anything other than what your current kernel is
compiled for? Would make sense to me ... is your kernel
optimised for P4 or P3?



Cheers,
Tink

I have set the processor type and features-->Processor family to (Pentium-4/Celeron(P4-based)/Pentium-4 M/older Xeon). I think that's how you would compile for a i686 computer. Is there any way to tell if an executable has been compiled for an i686 other than trying to run it on a i586 machine?