9fans archive / 2000 / 05 / 90 /    prev next

From: Douglas A. Gwyn DAGwyn@nul...
Subject: [9fans] (the potential) new release of Plan9, i386 only?
Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 09:15:09 GMT

Digby Tarvin wrote:
> Interesting statement. The difficulty of adding hardware to PCs is one
> of the things I hate about them.

The biggest problem I've had with them is the shortage of IRQs.
More than once I've had to sacrifice a useful device in order
to add another.

> The IDE interface present on most PCs has always been far less
> flexible than the SCSI interface used on most other systems, ...

So use SCSI.

The worst part of IDE is that as disks get larger, the way to
access them keeps changing (something like 5 times now).  You
would think at some point they would design a little bit more
for the future.

> I still feel that the PC is trailing in everything except
> price/performance, which is more a result of volume and market
> dominance than superior design.

Of course it's not an optimum design, but the advantage of
being able to buy disk, memory, peripherals, and especially
application software at the corner store is overwhelming.

I like the set-up I'm using: multiple OSes in one box.  (At
present: Windows 98, Windows/NT 4.0, Solaris 7, Plan 9, and
Inferno (hosted), with UNIX V7, RT-11, RSTS/E on a PDP-11
emulator for historical purposes.  If I knew of really *good*
Nintendo-64 and Apple IIGS emulators I'd be using them also.)
This way I get the advantage of the Windows apps (games!), but
with little difficulty can switch to a decent working environment.
(Since I have Solaris 7 on a SPARC at work, that's my usual choice.
"sam" is "sam".)

> Lack of driver support is also a problem for non-Microsoft operating
> systems.

Absolutely.  That is a real killer.  For example, 3D accelerated
graphics cards do not have a standard architectural interface,
not even for the plain 2D frame buffer aspect, so without an OS-
specific driver one ends up using them in plain VGA mode, ugh.

> On PCs, the resources go into developing a
> Windows driver, and having developed that the manufacturer typically
> decides that hardware documentation is not needed, and even worse,
> details are concealed as a trade secret...

I agree -- What do they care, when they're raking in bucks selling
to turn-key users?