# AMD K6-3D (aka. K6-III) processor class

## chemaja

Greetings to my fellow Gentoo-ers! Welcome to my first ever forums.gentoo.post!

After trowling the web for 1/2 an hour, I've barely managed to determine the processor class (ie. supported instruction set) of the AMD K6-3D (aka. K6-III) processor family.

It appears to be i686.

However, I can't verify this with an even remotely official-looking website (included in my search were https://forums.gentoo.org and http://www.amd.com -- to no avail). Maybe I'm blind. Maybe I'm over-tired (it's roughly 3am at the moment).

Whatever the reason, this post is stuffed full of enough keywords (ooh, I forgot 586   :Wink:  ) for the next lost Gentoo n00b to come along and (hopefully) find this post with (hopefully) a semi-knowledgeable thread of replies.

For those interested, I'm installing Gentoo on my brother's Compaq Presario: a AMD K6-3D 550MHz with 64Mb RAM (effectively 50MB -- the video card steals some).

As you may have guessed, I'll be installing a GRP system.   :Laughing:   I tried using my pentium3 LiveCD for a stage3+GRP, but the install came to a screeching halt when I tried to enter the chroot. The chroot command died with a message: "Illegal instruction".

Aah well. It was worth a try. Time to download LiveCD for i686 and hope I guessed the right processor architecture...

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## fishhead

The K6-III is at least fairly close to a i686. You should use -march=k6 in your CFLAGS and mmx and 3dnow in your USE flags. The K6-III doesn't support all the instructions that the Pentium 3 does; however, it does support all the instructions that the Pentium 2 does. i686 should work.

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## FuzzeX

I have a K6-III laptop that I've been running gentoo on for a while and I've always run it with CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu". I've tried precompiled i686 apps (notably setiathome) and they fail to run.

http://www.freehackers.org/gentoo/gccflags/flag_gcc3.html They say i586 also, so that's what I would run with.

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## fishhead

Oops, you're right, The K6 doesn't have CMOV, which i686s do ....

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## pmjdebruijn

jep, if i'm not mistaken, the entire AMD K6 architecture, is merely i586 with some addons...

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## chemaja

Thanks for the replies guys, especially FuzzeX for the URL defining safe flags for Gentoo 1.4.

This problem was solved in 11h57m, or from my perspective, on my very next login to https://forums.gentoo.org. If you ask me, that's SCHEWPER.  :Wink: 

Gotta love the Gentoo community!  :Very Happy: 

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## ctford0

 *drz wrote:*   

> jep, if i'm not mistaken, the entire AMD K6 architecture, is merely i586 with some addons...

 

Yes, the K6 family is all i586, the differencies that I think are these.

K6 ->  i586

K6-2 ->  added 3DNow!

K6-3 ->  basically a K6-2 with more onchip cache.

Chris

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## stonent

My make.conf file even says in it, to use i586 for all k6 series.

Basically you think about the interface, still using socket 7 so it is still a pentium class cpu.

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## regeya

Just to let people know, the K6 isn't the only processor like this.  The VIA C3 line is essentially the same as a K6-3; I have problems with packages that like to "intelligently" decide what processor I have.  Of all packages, the Endeavour file manager apparently needs CMOV.   :Twisted Evil: 

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## brotherswing71

You are right on all acounts.  I've got a (REALLY) beat up old Compaq laptop with a K6-2 333 that I had tried to install i686 on.  It failed.  I then tried i586 and it worked.  I've been reinstalling it for three days now. Right now it's in the next room - six hours into 'emerge system.'  At the speed that thing runs, I figure that'll take another two or three days.  Sometime next week I'll have my laptop (maybe.  :Wink:  )  Yeah, it's slow, but it was free!

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## lbrtuk

 *ctford0 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> K6 ->  i586
> 
> K6-2 ->  added 3DNow!
> ...

 

I think it's more along the lines of:

K5 -> i586

K6 -> added MMX

K6-2 ->  added 3DNow!

K6-3 ->  basically a K6-2 with more onchip cache.

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## mlapeyre

I see that this is referenced as the first of several duplicate threads, so I'm adding a post here.  I am trying to install Gentoo to a K6-2 machine, but it seems I must either use a 2006.0 i586 stage 3 or do a stage 1 install to get 2006.1.  There seems to be no i586 Stage 3 tarballs available on the mirrors.  

Is there a reason for this?  Should I just go with 2006.0 and update later?

Thanks,

MikeL

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## FuzzeX

mlapeyre:

You'll need to download the Minimal x86 CD to install properly on your K6-2. Use the 2006.0 x86 Stage 3 tar ball. You can update it easily during the install process. The conventional wisdom right now is to avoid doing Stage 1 installs in favor of installing Stage 3 and re-merging all programs.

I don't know the formal reason why there is no 2006.1 x86 Stage 3. It's probably easier to maintain the Stage 1 tar ball than have to maintain all 3 stages.

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## mlapeyre

Thanks, FuzzeX...

I had decided to do that anyway, since the more I looked at it the dodgier the Stage 1 deploy seemed.  Things are more or less moving along now...

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## yottabit

 *lbrtuk wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I think it's more along the lines of:
> 
> K5 -> i586
> ...

 

Yep, that's right. The K5 was Pentium pin-out compatible. Don't confuse the Am5x86 with the AMD K5... the Am5x86 was AMD's last CPU design (and was actually compatible with 80486, not Pentium, despite the odd naming convention). The Kx-series processors were Nextgen's design and released by AMD when AMD bought out Nextgen.

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