What is involved in switching from i386 to AMD64?

[Oliver Iberien]

On Sunday 31 December 2006 11:05, Erik Trulsson wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 10:40:37AM -0800, Oliver Iberien wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > What actually needs to be done when switching machine architectures? I am
> > facing a motherboard/CPU upgrade following the demise of an Athlon+
> > setup. (I am running my FreeBSD drive in a P3 while trying to figure this
> > out.)
> >
> > Replacing it with an oldish P4 would be easiest but they are rapidly
> > becoming extinct. After much Googling I can't quite figure out what
> > happens if I were to put the FreeBSD i386 HD into a 64-bit system.
> > Nothing? Disaster? Do I totally have the wrong end of the stick? I'd be
> > grateful for any advice.
>
> Since the AMD64 architecture is completely backwards-compatible with the
> older i386 architecture, the i386 version of FreeBSD should work just fine
> in the new system.

Thanks very much for this. I have the impression from scanning the 
freebsd-amd64 archives that it is difficult to convert an existing system 
from i386 to AMD64, and probably not worth it. Do people have any opinions on 
this?

Oliver