From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Mar 13 22:44:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from edwin.mounet.com (edwin.mounet.com [216.145.76.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id ACE7337B719 for ; Tue, 13 Mar 2001 22:44:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hornback@wireco.net) Received: (qmail 29891 invoked by uid 0); 14 Mar 2001 06:29:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO eagle) (216.145.70.66) by mounet.com with SMTP; 14 Mar 2001 06:29:31 -0000 From: "Andrew C. Hornback" To: Subject: Now a little OT but RE: FreeBSD and Linux (More Questions!) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 01:44:05 -0500 Message-ID: <016a01c0ac52$29e2d080$0f00000a@eagle> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 In-Reply-To: <003701c0ac4a$e0a76cc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > >also remember working with snow white and the seven dwarfs, and > >already knew that interoperability was something you got > in a computer > >line, at least until the manufacturer decided to play > shell games to > >kill the third party hardware market. Hmm... shall we say, IBM here? Just how many manufacturers adopted MCA? IBM, Tandy did a couple of machines with it ('course, Tandy always followed IBM's lead with strange hardware designs... Tandy 1000 SX followed the PC jr., need I say more?). I believe Siemens, Northridge, and possibly Fujitsu produced machines with MCA support. Anyone know? > I don't remember if there was a lot of crossover between > the mainframe and > PC people back then - I think the markets were pretty > foreign to each > other. There never really was a crossover. Gotta look at the big mainframe producers and see where they are now. Where's Cray? Last I heard they were part of SGI, who was also going in the tank over their line of NT based workstations (what the hell were THEY thinking?). IBM's Mainframe business... how many ES/9000s do you see being sold each year? They've moved to the AS/400 and RS/6000 lines. And Digital? Now a division of Compaq, simply because Compaq couldn't build a high end machine to save their life and didn't know what good customer support was. Then there was Unisys and their Clearpath line, which may still exist, not really sure. But I know they've cut out their consumer PC division, and used a lot of resources to build the new high end servers that have CMP technology. What about Data General, or Wang, or ... The mainframe is getting to be like a classic car from the 50s. Nice to look at, the new generation Oohs and Aahs over it, but no one really wants to touch it for fear of breaking it and no one wants to support it any more due to the costs of replacement parts, etc. (not that mainframe parts were ever cheap...) > >The internet used to be the one place where interoperability was > >important. I'm already miss it. > > Sigh. Yes, the one thing that seems to remain a constant is there's > always some yokel that has the world's greatest plan to release a > proprietary solution, force everyone to switch to it, then lay on > the beach the rest of their lives being paid for doing nothing. It > seldom works but every once in a while it does, just enough > to encourage > the rest of the idiots to attempt it over and over. Which reminds me... has anyone seen the new Intel vision of what a consumer PC is going to be? It's basically a stack of boxes, like an Aztec temple, each one holding a component or two. Foundational box holding the motherboard, processor and memory. Next step up holding the DVD-RAM drive, followed up the next steps containing the HDD, the other removable media drive (looked like a Zip drive), and the top being the control and I/O panel with all of the ports on top. Gone are your PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard, replaced by USB. Gone are your serial and parallel ports, replaced by USB. This is what they want the PC to be once the IA-64 hits mainstream. Which basically means that when the Itanium gets out there and into the hands of more than the technophiles, nearly everything that we have now is going to be obsolete. Thank you Intel! *applies thumb to nose and wiggles fingers liberally in Intel's general direction* --- Andy To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message