i386 on AMD64 architecture

Micah micahjon at ywave.com
Sun Sep 25 13:40:45 PDT 2005



Graham North wrote:
> It is my understanding that the AMD 64 family supports 32-bit i386 code 
> completely...can someone confirm this.
> 
> I would like to stay with 32 bit for the time being but run it on a new 
> MB using an AMD64 architecture.  Should I therefore be simply installing 
> an i386 iso as though it is on an Intel machine? Will the i386 iso then 
> have full support for AMD specific drivers such as the k8t800?  I 
> noticed from this link  
> http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64/motherboards.html THAT the the 
> VIA K8T800 and K8T890 seem to be reasonably supported whereas not many 
> other current AMD Northbridges are (note however that  this support is 
> for AMD64 iso).
> 
> Any pearls of wisdom much appreciated. No I do not wish to install as 64 
> bit at this time...
> Thanks, Graham/
> 

You'll probably get a lot of responses on this one.  I'm currently 
running the i386 FreeBSD on an Ahtlon 64 as my desktop.  I also have the 
64 bit installed on a seperate partition to experiment with.  I have an 
A8V-E mobo that has the K8T890.  Works just fine except an occasional 
glitch while booting freezes the system.  I've read it's an ACPI thing, 
but since I rarely reboot I've not bothered to disable ACPI.

Later,
Micah


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