Re: I'm giving up computers if this is the future.
From: Undisclosed (nomail_at_dontbeaweaselspammer.com)
Date: 09/12/04
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Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:19:20 -0400
Mike Bartman wrote:
> I have. PCI is better, with the newer MBs, but it isn't perfect.
>
> The first things I listed were mostly problems with the IBM PC. Some
> of them have been improved considerably in the last 20 years, some
> haven't.
true enough.
>>everyone uses PCI and the derivatives now. Even Apple(!) and Sun.
>
>
> That's not because it's better. It's just more available.
better alternatives don't matter for anything but niche markets if they
aren't open.
ISA was open.
PCI is fairly open.
>>>How about the whole "can't address a drive over xxx megabytes" thing?
>>>(that we went through more than once as drives *continued* to get
>>>bigger...like nobody thought that would happen after the first two
>>>times and came up with a scheme that wasn't closed-ended???) And all
>>>the various ways different companies came up with to get around it?
>>
>>is there a generic solution to this?
>
>
> Yeah, if you design things properly. The culprit is fixed length
> fields in data structures. That may have been necessary 30 years ago
> due to limited memory and CPU power, but there's not much excuse for
> it today. If you need still more speed than the CPU can manage (find
> this hard to believe...), use variable length fields to describe the
> drive, and self-modifying code when you mount the drives...write the
> fixed length version as you need it; once you know what sizes you are
> dealing with on the particular drive in question. Don't hard code
> them into the EPROMS and standards, and then run into a wall when
> drives exceed the limits set by this, and then play all sorts of games
> trying to get around them...just fix the problem up front!
interesting.
>>AMD-64 adds a comfortable number of registers. It's not the SPARC with
>>32 GP registers, but it's not bad.
>
>
> While it may be compatible with the Intel 80x86 family, it isn't the
> Intel 80x86 family, so it doesn't change my complaints with the Intel
> 80x86 family.
true enough.
>>At least the non-real-mode
>>
>>>addressing has gotten rid of that rediculous segmented memory model
>>>and the pain and suffering it exacted...you couldn't even compare two
>>>pointers without "normalizing" them first (stuffing as much of the
>>>address into the segment register as possible).
>>
>>dude, segments have been dead for everything but control by the OS
>>kernel itself since the 386.
>
>
> No, not really. The 80486 and MS-DOS (and early Windows versions)
> used real mode too, and had the segment problems, and I suspect that
> the current Pentium 4 still has them in there too...though I haven't
> tried to program an Intel chip at that level since the Pentium
> days...I let the compilers worry about it these days and don't write
> any boot code. As I said, going virtual and using the "flat model"
> eliminated them, but they are still there in the CPUs if you aren't
> using that mode of operation.
I was thinking of Linux, which has been all flat-mode, all the time
since forever.
regardless, the problem had been fixed by Intel by adding flat mode to
the 386.
the rest of it is more of a problem with MS software not upgrading than
the architecture.
>>>And the flash upgrades of motherboards that, if anything goes wrong,
>>>leaves you with a dead bit of chip-jewelry? How about a ROM with the
>>>flash program in it and a reset so you can try again to load a new
>>>BIOS??? That one's not IBM's fault...they didn't have a way to
>>>upgrade the BIOS without plugging in a new chip...
>>
>>if you are buying a server or high-end PC, you can get one with two
>>flash memories full of BIOS. One dies - you switch to the other.
>
>
> That there are options on some systems, if you spend enough on them,
> doesn't change the fact that PCs have problems...
why?
some people don't flash their firmware often enough to justify having
two BIOS's and can deal with the wait for getting a new BIOS.
most people don't ever flash their firmware, in fact.
you have the option of getting it, or not.
it's not particularly expensive.
>>ahh, a hardware geek. ;)
>
>
> No, I'm a programmer...but software has to run on hardware to get any
> real speed out of it...and as a computer owner and user, I do tend to
> pay attention to hardware and its capabilities.
same here.
>>never heard of those machines, actually.
>
>
> You're under 30, aren't you?
jawohl!
>You're one of those people who came
> along after the Wintel boxes took over the world,
actually, I was loading games from cartridges at 5 on my C64, futzing
around a bit with BASIC as a 8-9 year old on a Commadore 64, entering
PEEK and POKE commands from Commadore Magazine to fiddle with my games
at 10, and playing with DOS on my first 386 in-between playing with a
Amiga while reading about Core Wars.
so I'm a microcomp kid.
so you've never seen
> the other ways it could have been if Joe Sixpack and the BOTASMs
> hadn't perverted the computer revolution. You don't know any
> better...
the Commadore 64 WAS the first real mass marketed computer (Apple II was
more business'y and didn't have the fancy stuff like good sound and
graphics chips required for mass market, and had different marketing -
Commadore aimed straight for the mass market from the beginning)...
if it weren't for the demands of Joe Sixpack, I probably would have
never gotten started with this since I wouldn't have had a computer to
play with.
what's a BOTASM?
> [the above is mostly a mini rant...may or may not really apply to you,
> but it's true enough for too many...]
well, I do try to learn about computing history and older systems,
although I don't know much about anything before the PDP-11, besides the
TX-0 that the MIT Tech Model Railroad club worked on and that IBM old
mainframes and 360's ruled the Earth.
I mean, I'm on a VMS newsgroup... nobody else I know from my generation
even remembers VMS as anything but a historical system.
I first heard about VMS when following the whole Mitnick thing as a kid.
I'm interested in LISP, which most people think is useless and too old,
and I'm trying to learn ML right now.
>>as for the expansion bus... ISA is one of the major reasons the PC
>>florished.
>
>
> That it had an expansion bus, yes, I agree. That it had such a sucky
> one is another issue. IBM tried to fix it with the Microchannel bus
> in the PS-2, but the world was already too far down the rackety ISA
> track to switch by that point. Too bad they didn't think things
> through better before they foisted the PC on the world in a mad rush
> of indifference to the whole concept of personal computers...
Microchannel could have been technically perfect, but it was owned lock,
stock, and barrel by IBM.
would you have adopted it if you were a clone maker?
>>I agree with your general points that the PC, when it started out, was a
>>wretched architecture.
>>
>>but it's had 20 years to rub away the sharp edges.
>
>
> Some. It has improved, but some of the rough edges are still there,
> they are just covered up a bit here and there. They still show
> through though. Things like where you can install NT on a disk for it
> to boot properly (first 2 gigs only I believe...due to a limitation in
> the BIOS design I hear), the whole drive letter scheme that limits
> total drive count (you can get around it sort of with RAID), etc..
"drive letter scheme"?
are you referring to Windows's stupid "C:" drive crap, or the fact the
average PC only can handle a limited number of drives?
I can get rid of the "C:" crap by installing Linux or the BSD's, and you
can get around the second by installing another SATA or SCSI card.
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