On Sun, 31 Mar 1996, Peter Seebach wrote:

> Oh, come on.  According to the legends of our people, Intel asks potential
> new hires what they think of the 386, and refuses to hire people who like
> it.

It is just what you stated. A legend4!

> If I had an 80x86 system, I'd be a lot happier if the portmaster were
> aware of the fundemental misdesign of the system, and wasn't trying to
> pretend otherwise.  They *do* suck.  The reason we use things like NetBSD,
> FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, et al. is that they manage to *hide* most of the
> ways in which the PC design sucks.  Admittedly, it would be great if it
> could be more hidden in this case, but that takes time and effort, above
> and beyond what's already going into this project.

You should not mix the bad design of a Computer (here IBM PC) and the CPU.
IMHO the i386 is very good for writing a Un*x OS. All basically needed is 
there. MMU et. al.
Linus Torvalds once sad that he would not have started the Linux Project
if he would not have seen a nice cpu wasted in a DOS/Win environment.
There is binary level compatibility from i386+i387 up to PPro.


The problem with PCs is different.
1. It used to lack a good OS.
   DOS + theh graphical front end Windows did not make use of all the  
   nice features of a i386. (Linear addressing, MMU, protected mode..)

2. There a severe problems with hw design. This has been caused by the 
   fact that IBM expected the PC line to expire after 2-3 Years.
   fixed 640-1024k area for device BIOS.
   A20 Gate via keyboard controller (brain damaged)
   lack of plug&play (now a little bit improved if only PCI gets used)
   ....


Yours,
-- martin

// Martin Konold, Muenzgasse 7, 72070 Tuebingen, Germany  // 
// Email: zxmmz01@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-tuebingen.de            // 
//    http://www.schwaben.de/linux                        // 
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