Re: Wireless weirdness (was: NT Stuff)

[Bayard R. Coolidge]

Ben Scott pointed out:

>>> Keep in mind that the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) for
>>> Microsoft Windows is a lot shorter than the pool of available hardware.
>>> If it is not on the HCL, Microsoft makes no promises as to whether
>>> Windows will work.

We had the same sort of issue on Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX for quite a
long time. There are a lot of devices out there that could conceiveably been
plopped into a PCI slot on our systems, but actual device driver support was
a different issue entirely. In fact, there was a fair amount of well-known
hardware that we eschewed because it wouldn't work at the speeds we were
going, even though they "worked" under Windows. I don't want to get into
a debate over the comparison of the various OS environments, but I will say
that we were capable of pushing hardware a lot harder/faster than Windows
could back then. Also, sometimes some vendors used to have very imaginative
interpretations of the PCI spec, and didn't realize that we could assemble
test systems that would easily bring their design inadequacies to light. One
major Ethernet controller vendor lost a large account up in Canada many years
ago when we proved that their cards could not sustain multiple back-to-back
transfers at full Ethernet (10 Mbits/sec back then) speed, but ours could, like
the Ethernet (Blue Book) Spec said it should. Several hundred PC's tied to
our VAXen had their Ethernet cards ripped out and replaced with ours, and
the customer was delighted thereafter...

B.

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