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> I have gotten Rust to compile for 386 DOS machines before I don't know why I laughed so hard at this. Why would any sane person do this?
by xyst 5y ago
> I have gotten Rust to compile for 386 DOS machines before
I don't know why I laughed so hard at this. Why would any sane person do this?
- mhh__ 5y agoWhy not? If you talk to the spooky GCC people with beards they'll point out that they support much much weirder chips than that (albeit with little to no library support).
- serentty 5y agoIt’s fun. Lots of people like doing retro game dev and the like, but often you are stuck with ancient C toolchains that suck even if you like C itself. Getting Rust working is a great way to make it more enjoyable from a hobbyist perspective, I think.
- b112 5y agoI guess you will laugh harder, at the guy trying to get it to work on Psion 3a.
- cesarb 5y ago> Why would any sane person do this? Perhaps the same kind of people who got GCC to compile for 386 DOS machines (also using DPMI). Which might sound useless, since it's an underpowered operating system running on underpowered hardware, but it was used to build some very popular software, like the original Quake game (source: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/history.html).
- nine_k 5y agoThe original Doom, yes. Even though it was barely playable on a 386 25 MHz. The original Quake was barely playable on a 486 DX4 100 MHz, and was fine on a Pentium.
- anthk 5y agoThe FastDoom port slims down some floor textures and such and makes Doom playable (and not stamp sized) on a 386. About the 386, you could run SICP as a GNU Info file blazingly fast and a Scheme compiler on another TTY, or under GNU Screen. You could typeset with Groff and Mom, too. Now try running LaTeX on that. Yes, Donald Knuth is the Ur-creator on CS and typesetting, but hey, sometimes you don't need a full 3GB Texlive suite to typeset some book or math equation notebook.
- wonderbore 5y agoYou're a cat, a 386 DOS machine is a tiny box on the floor. You jump in the box and slowly settle all of your limbs into the box till you can sit. Now you fit. Is it sane? No. But you're a cat.
- nine_k 5y agoYou may not believe me, but there are relatively modern 386-compatible embedded systems. Some of them run DOS for the sake of very old applications, such as certain industrial control software. Targeting them for modernization without gutting the hardware (which can be perfectly functioning and highly durable) is a valid goal.