On Sat, 11 Sep 1999, J.S. Havard wrote:

> You know, if there is one good the about Pee Cees, it is that whatever can
> run on a 12MHz 386 can run on a PIII Xeon 500MHz box.  It may not be
> optimized (at that speed, who could tell?), but atleast it will work!  As
> great as the vax is, this is something that could have been better.  Low
> level stuff.  There is so much work that must be put into getting it to
> run on the next model, it just isn't even funny.

Huh? Did you ever git it backwards...

Whatever can run on a 386 can run on a PIII? Probably, but what about the
8086, 80186 and 80286? And besides, hardly everything that runs on a PIII
can run on the 386 (still not to mention the 8086...)

On the VAX, on the other hand, if it runs on one, it runs on all of them.
(Well, okay, some stuff are emulated on some CPUs, which others implement
it in hardware...)
*However*, please differ between the CPU and the rest of the hardware.

Different VAXen have different buses, and different console hardware. This
means some stuff concerning that are done differently. But the PC isn't
any better in the way. How about ISA, EISA, PCI, MCA, PCMCI, USB and so
one... Not fun at all. And then you have the BIOS, which are supposed to
hide this from you, but does a halfass job of it. NetBSD skips the BIOS as
fast as it can.

Look at the config file for the PC, and count all the buses. Even though
the VAXen eventually got a handful, it's pretty clean compared to that.

So, CPU-wise, the x86-stuff are *far* worse than the VAX, which really is
compatible all the way, since a VAX is actually defined.

Bus-wise, the PC is a hodge-podge of buses and devices. The only unifying
attempt is the BIOS, which you really don't want anyway.

The only big problem here, which I guess is what you are bitching about,
is the fact that quite a few options which are external to the CPU, but
still a part of the machine, such as cache and bus adapters, which means
that there need to be some work donw to get another member running
NetBSD...

> No wonder VMS isn't "The Greatest<tm>".  There is a ton of crap in the
> low-level stuff that is specific to certain models, all billion and three
> or so.  The only good part about this is that when DEC made the screwed up
> hardware, it worked, and it usually worked very well.  I guess that is the
> price we pay for advancement?

There are plenty of reasons why VMS isn't on every desk, but that's not
one of them.


Hmmm, are you trolling us?

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol