Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:20:13 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: if_de.c ???? Message-ID: <199705130150.LAA12237@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970512164753.00c39a40@etinc.com> from dennis at "May 12, 97 04:47:56 pm"
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dennis stands accused of saying: > > Horse Hockey! This is the old IBM PC problem....who is going to > establish the market if noone can make enough margin to pay for the > initial marketing? The "reference implementation" has to be good enough. > Companies like DEC will have to make business decisions about > whether they want to have a handful of OEMs or sell to the general > public. I think that there will be "limited" agreements, in which > the manufacturers of ASICs keep the specs under wraps for a year or > two, letting the marketing companies recover their investments, and > then flood the market for the taiwanese clone manufacturers. *shrug* Doesn't seem to work like that, bucko. Witness the NE[12]000, SMC8xx3, and now the cards based on the Digital chipset (starting with the DEC cards themselves). In each case, it was the reference implementation standing well on its own despite being built with documented off-the-shelf parts that lead to the general acceptance of the architecture as a market standard. Amusingly enough, this is the same as for the PC in the first place. > Dennis -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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