Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 00:19:27 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" Message-ID: <199911230019.RAA01731@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <000501bf353c$42b15110$021d85d1@youwant.to> from "David Schwartz" at Nov 22, 99 02:52:32 pm
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> > > We aren't still stuck using 8 bit computers, are we? > > > > No, we are stuck using 8MHz 16 bit I/O busses, incapable of > > identifying all of the devices you plug into them, and incapable > > of doing bys mastering into your full memory address space. > > We aren't stuck with them. We still have them, but we don't use > them. This is a 'best of both worlds' situation. We still have > compatability, but we don't have to suffer all the disadvantages. > This is one way that lock in can be broken -- by maintaining > compatability. I don't understand how I am no longer locked into supporting ISA device probes, so long as there is an ISA bus in the machines on which my OS runs. I either support the hardware (all of it), or I don't support the hardware. How do I avoid suffering the disadvantages of carrying around this legacy code and paying the penalty at boot time? The answer is that, so long as there is an ISA bus in my machine, I will be paying for it. > > You might have an argument against inferior technologies after > > the last ISA card is dead and buried, but don't bet on it: I > > can't run arbitrary speeds between different PCI slots yet, > > either. > > What's your point here? We have the options of both superior and > inferior technologies. No one is locked into anything. This is a > case of engineering ingenuity and market forces breaking lock in. No. It is a case of being locked into supplying ISA slots. [ ... PCMCIA ... ] > Right. I never said that the very best possible technology would always be > brought to market. I simply said that market lock in wouldn't be able to > hold us into significantly inferior technologies. PCMCIA is significantly inferior to PCCard, but we are locked into supporting it, just as with ISA. As a matter of fact, one thing that Microsoft could do with its monopoly that would be a real benefit is to stop supporting ISA in its OS. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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