Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:27:25 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, jehamby@lightside.com, hackers@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BeBox mention of FreeBSD... Message-ID: <199606110057.KAA07546@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199606102355.QAA05054@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at Jun 10, 96 04:55:16 pm
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Terry Lambert stands accused of saying: > > > > Anyone who puts a BeBox on the 'factory floor' has rocks in their head. > > The 'GeekPort' isn't up to any sort of serious industrial interfacing, > > and the BeBox box wouldn't have a hope of survival. > > Actually, the BeOS has good RT support that FreeBSD lacks. Coupled > with the RS-485 capable ports, it's make an OK control box, though > it seems more like a prototype set-top box than anything else to me. I'm not knocking the BeOS - I know next to nothing about it. I _did_ however spend a fair amount of time studying the available lit. on the physical hardware, and it's another desktop box. It's just not up to surviving a 'factory floor' environment. It needs an IP555 or better case to start with, and a real power supply. > I would have a hard time trusting the "geekport" because of the > ISA interfacing logic used throughout... I wish they had used the More of a worry is the lack of any sort of real isolation on the port. One slip with your prototype and the motherboard is toast. Not much of an "experimenters' dream" if you ask me. > So, "geekport" aside, I think that it would make a nice little > embedded systems controller. Too big. Too expensive. > I remember when IOmega was using Commodore 64's loaded from tape > drives to run their optical interferometry hardware for their > Zirconium bonding in their Bernoulli heads. Don't underestimate > cheap hardware with NMI-based scheduling. I'm not. But the Be isn't particularly cheap, and certainly isn't particularly physically or electrically robust. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled diet of "CVS week". > Terry Lambert -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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