On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
> In a message dated: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 11:05:01 EST
> Rich Payne said:
>
> >On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
> >
> >Only if you think that DE500 (aka Tulip based) and Intel EEpro100 network
> >cards using a PCI bus are propriatary :)
>
> I mean the system as a whole. The proprietary-ness comes from the
> entire package as a whole being qual'ed to work with very specific
> software.
>
> You can ship alpha systems with Linux, and still have it be a
> proprietary package, since as the vendor, you're determining the
> hardware you'll support.
>
> Technically, VA systems stuff would be considered proprietary, since
> they only support a certain narrow list of hardware. However, the
> hardware they use is quite similar to what the average person uses
> anyway.
by this account everything is propriatary...Modern day Alpha machine
actually have more in common with PCs than most people realize. About the
only differences are the CPU, most times the motherboard chipset (though
some run with AMD's irongate, same as K7), and the firmware.
> Now, if they were to add features to their system which did not exist
> from any other vendor, then that would be *really* proprietary.
>
> What makes the Alpha systems proprietary, I guess "commercial level"
> would be a more apropos description, is that is has things like
> EEPROMs.
I don't follow that one....your everyday Intel NIC has an eeprom. We use a
system flash just like x86 boxes do, though granted many times it's a bit
bigger and contains different code.
> Hmmm, maybe it just comes down to the fact that no matter how fast
> Intel/AMD get their CPUs, at the heart of the matter is that PCs are
> just toy computers. The basic architecture hasn't changed in over 20
> years, they were never designed to be enterprise-level machines, and
> the design just basically lacks a lot of nice features that other
> systems like Sun, Dec, HP, and IBM design in to the overal
> architecture from the beginning.
Absolutly....PCs are PCs and will continue to be....you can call them
whatever you want but there 20 odd years of "backwards
compatibility" there. Heck...last I knew even the brand new Pentium 4s
running at 1.5GHz can only address 1MB of memory when they're first
powered up....just like the old 8MHz 8088/8086 :)
--rdp
--
Rich Payne
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.alphalinux.org
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