Hauke,

>"Performance" -- what performance do you expect to gain by "direct"
>hardware access? We usually use the ROM code to find out about peculiar

Well, it goes like this: I'd like to see the best performance possible
from these old Mac's, 'cause I like'em and I'd like to keep them alive
and usable for as long as I can.  I was asking whether or not it would
provide more thruput out of them.  If it won't, it won't, but that
remains to be seen.

I'm not a philosopher or an Intel bigot...I'm just asking what might
be expected from their effort.  If you don't like that, or what their
doing, or why, don't lay that on me.  Tell them that you don't agree
with their effort and why.  To be frank, I don't give a damn.  All I
wanted was the answer to the question, and I asked the experts to
let me hear their opinion.  I didn't ask for a sermon.

And I'm not like anyone else you've seen ask a similar question by
the way.  And I have sent some of my own hardware to one of the 
experts, for the good of the project.  Its one way I can help out.
I'm not a programmer, and I don't want to be, but that doesn't
mean I can't help the project effort in other ways, like testing
kernels on one machine or another, sending my hardware off so work
can be done on drivers for it, etc, and if that isn't enough for 
you I couldn't care less.

Paul