Solved:486 stage3 works again (Gentoo Catalyst Infra fixed!)

eccerr0r · Last edited by eccerr0r on Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:11 am; edited 1 time in total

I fscked up my 486 install (actually, K6-233 that I occasionally use on older machines) so I had to reinstall.

So I untarred the 486 stage3 snapshot on a hard drive with my i7 and rebuilt the packages I was using on that disk; fortunately @world file was still there along with my USE flags/masks.

The snapshot was named stage3-i486-20180423T214502Z.tar.xz

About 43 packages installed, none of which were gcc.

However once done, I verified with qemu with 486 emulation that the disk still works, looks good.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

I ran a K6-III for many years, but only self-hosted, which I know would mean much waiting. I ran it as i586, since the K6-III was one instruction (CMPXCH?) shy of i686, but certainly i486 is a viable target.

If you're really stuck, try starting from the stage3 tarball on the k6.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

I think it's again a problem with user and coffee abuse

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 4:39 pm Post subject:

Well, obviously gcc is part of stage3, not because I didn't install it (if it weren't clear, I used the old @world file and remerged @world so I could get back to where I was with the machine prior to the mishap).

I was simply trying to rule out the problem that if I did install gcc with the i7 and the i7 built gcc wrong: then it would be my fault. But I hadn't, so it is a stage3 problem.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Tony0945 · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:16 pm Post subject:

Is there a k6-3 binhost somewhere?

Is there somewhere I can post a working k6-3 gcc, glibc, and libtool for you?
Would you trust it if I can? I'll be glad too.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:36 pm Post subject:

Well, I should be okay cross compiling I would hope, I was more wondering if there was a systemic issue with the Gentoo auto builder for building install media.

It's weird (but maybe not so weird) that qemu set to 486 works fine. I suspect it's because the non-privileged new instructions don't get trapped by qemu - they'll only trap CPUID and privileged instructions that would trap anyway, and thus qemu is no replacement for real hardware testing...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

John R. Graham · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:53 pm Post subject:

Release Engineering reports that an inadvertent consequence of an architectural update to Catalyst has caused recent 486 stages to be built with "-march=i686". They're definitely hosed.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:38 pm Post subject:

Ah cool so I'm not seeing things :D

So only C++ applications are affected or more than just that?

----------

I rebuilt the world (emerge -e @world) on a i686 with the proper forced CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS to i486, and now happy to report that i486 is working, at least running on a K6-233. Now I need to make a backup of this system...or not...

I shouldn't have needed to rebuild @world - luckily I had a i686 at my disposal.

This K6-233 is slow. It has 256MB @PC66 SDRAM, but has 0K L2 cache because the chipset has no idea how to cache 256MB RAM.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:10 am Post subject:

Resolved, looks like it's been fixed, and once again Gentoo truly supports 486's :D bugs.gentoo.org report is here
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:39 pm Post subject:

eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:49 pm Post subject:

IIRC Intel 430TX chipset with four 72-pin SIMMs and two 168-pin DIMMs (of which IIRC have two 128M's installed), and Intel has long since abandoned Socket 7 by the K6-III. The machine is just used for its legacy ports (parallel port bit bang, serial rs-232 port), no GUI due to hard drive space. It has an ISA network card too...

Swapping is only a problem when emerging...though I try not to build anything on this machine.

Unless 'upgrades' are $0 shipped, I have no interest, thanks, I have enough boat anchors :)
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:06 pm Post subject:

I don't build on my k6 either. I have a 32-bit partition on my Phenom II that I installed i486 like you then re-compiled everything. I build packages in it and rsync them to the real K-6.
5X faster, 3X cores, full 4G memory that makes a real difference in build time.
My chipset is some third party chipset. Mine has three DIMM slots. I thought I had 256MB modules, but not certain. If you find your manual, see if it takes 245MB modules. It really makes a difference on Linux to have more memory. IIRC, Gnome2 was real slow on mine while NT is faster.

Mine also has a PCI NIC and a PCI four port USB card which is handy. If you have a spare PCI slot, I think Vantec used to make a PCI SATA I interface card.

eccerr0r · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:00 pm Post subject:

Yeah the SiS and Via chipsets for Super 7 probably handle more memory, but not the Intel chipsets.

I did try a 256M module and a 128M module in there at one point, it only detected 256MB. On the other hand, other than the swapping problem, the machine is faster with 64MB FPM DRAM in it due to the cache. With 256M SDRAM, there's much less swapping.

I also do not have spare drives lying around, hence it got left with a puny 2GB disk...probably has tons of other "1024" problems in BIOS anyway. I do have PCI UDMA PATA cards that should get around some of those 1024 issues, but, still doesn't get around not having spare disks I can donate to it.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:18 pm Post subject:

Yeah, as soon as you mentioned VIA, I remembered that that's my chipset. I think the mobo is Tyan, but have to open the box to be sure.
I have quite a few IDE drives because WD Cavair seems to never die. I was shocked to find that USPS is paying $300 each for refurbished WD40G's that they format as 4Gig for an older machine that runs NT on Xeon.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:31 pm Post subject:

Yeah, the old WD's were sturdy beasts.
_________________
PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2018 1:07 am Post subject:

I had a really old IDE WD, 40MB, that tore itself up when mounted on its side. Ever since then I've been wary about side mounting...and WDs...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Tony0945 · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:56 am Post subject:

I've always mounted them wide side vertical and circuit board up. Only had one fail (not catastrophically) at 4 and half years. WD replaced it with a refurbished one but only warranted it for the six months left on the original warranty. Still running years later. I have win 7 on it now. Also IDE. The mobo for the win7 computer has only one SATA I connecter and the usual dual IDE. I have a one TB first generation SATA WD in it for bulk storage and the OS on IDE. I use it for Turbotax and SageTV. I now have the Linux version of SageTV running and with the new Tax laws may not purchase TurboTax anymore since the deductions are limited (sorry to veer into politics). Oh, I also use Win 7 to build palemoon for XP since the project no longer offers an XP download.