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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

I compiled for a 386 laptop with 387 math coprocessor but no 
pci, pcmcia, or ethernet, to which we might plug in a parport Backpack 
CD-ROM drive or a zip drive so I did
make [config is optional] and answered a bunch of questions Y or N or M 
(for modules) or ? to learn more.
make dep - 30 sec to make a Makefile

make bzImage - it got stuck on:

..../boot
as86 -0 -a -o bbootsect.o bbootsect.s
as86   Command not found   Error 127

There was no as86 on my computer.

In MANIFEST.gz I found it in bin86.tgz.  'The bin86 package is needed to 
compile the kernel'.  (Nobody told me this before, did they?)

I installed SW7.1 bin86.tgz and it is compiling again (with gcc and make 
and binutils from SW81 and glibc2.2.5).

It finished without errors this time:
Root device is (3, 66)  [what does this mean?]
Boot sector is 512 bytes.
Setup is 1288 bytes.
System is 392 kB

There is a bzImage in ./arch/i386/boot/bzImage 404642 bytes (392K?). I 
will try booting bl3 with it (loop) with mem=3M. I left in loop and 
ramdisk in the kernel so this would work.  Renamed it zimag386.

Since it puts files into the directory and subdirectories where I unpacked 
the kernel source, including the kernel image itself, I think you would 
need to reconfigure something to put files elsewhere in order to compile 
from a CD with source files.

It booted with this new kernel and mem=3M.  I made sure to compile with 
loop and ramdisk Y as in BL3 kernel so I could use the loop version of 
BL3.

 Making a  /dev/loop0  Press enter to login...

Free:  Total 1744 Used 1520  Free 224  Shared 480 Buffers 324

Free plus Buffers gives me 548K to work in.

I am astonished it worked.  Anyone should be able to compile a kernel 
given bin86.tgz, even with make gcc and binutils from a later version.

This was MUCH easier and faster (once I found as86) than compiling any 
programs.  I deleted the non i386 parts of /include and /arch and /drivers 
and /Documentation to save space.  This put me down to 67MB of source code 
(without hamradio or acorn either).  I could probably delete ftape and 
zorro bus and other things as well if I knew what they were (acorn says it 
is specific to ARM).

I was able to run okay in 3MB RAM until I tried to ls 11MB of /net.

Is there some way to extract my configuration from Makefile or wherever it 
went so I can use it again with slight modifications (add pci and pcmcia 
back for the newer 486)?

I did not make any modules and will use the ones from SW71 - but how would 
I have made modules if needed?  Do I just put the code in the same 
directory where the other code is while compiling the kernel?

The zimage that I made with support (I hope) for parport zip and backpack 
parport cd-rom drives is 404642 bytes.  Steven's generic BL3 386 kernel is 
435775 and his p1 420879.  Why are the kernels for later hardware smaller?

My earlier one is smaller because I omitted cdrom and pci and pcmcia and 
ethernet module support and nls support.