Via EPIA - how to workaround on i686 bug

[archived]

Hi,

i have 2 EPIAs that are prone on so called 'i686' bug (they represent as i686, but fail to work in this kernel - and actually need i386 kernel to work). Those boards are me6000.

On previous versions of Pluto, installing i386 kernel and some manual hacks to fool Pluto to use i386 kernel for those boards. But I wonder if there are any more elegant workarounds for this problem (maybe bios upgrade or something similar) ... ?

What do you do to get me6000 board working as an MD under Pluto ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Rob.

[archived]

We don't use ME6000 boards, or any non-i686 (or "almost i686") CPUs.

In theory, the BIOS could implement the missing instructions in software so when the CPU issues an illegal intruction error, the BIOS would just interpret the instruction instead. They did it for the CPUID function for the old Cyrix 6x86 CPUs, so I guess they could do the same with the CMOV instruction in the "almost i686" C3 CPUs if they wanted to.