What's "unknown" about i386-unknown?

[Tino Engel]

Bill Moran schrieb:
> In response to "Dan Mahoney, System Admin" <danm at prime.gushi.org>:
>
>   
>> Hey all.
>>
>> I see i386-unknown as a build target all the time.
>>
>> So my (possibly silly) question is: what's the unknown variable here?  And 
>> why isn't it?
>>     
>
> I seem to remember a conversation about this, and that the original
> spec for that string required a "physical location" after the architecture.
>
> I'm guessing that at the time it was very important to know which of
> the few physical machines did the job.
>
> If my memory is reliable, it's not that the information is "unknown", it's
> just that nobody cares any more, therefore nobody bothers to enter the
> physical location information.
>
>   
Well, I actually have i386-portbld-7,0-BETA3.
How does that fit?