In a recent note, R.S. said:
> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 18:51:18 +0200
>
> Not so simple. IBM delivers PCs with OS/2. These are "regular' PC's, so
> year after year (month?) they have larger disk, new interfaces (USB,
> AGP, PCI-X to nam a few), new graphic cards etc. All that staff requires
> new device drivers, sometimes code debugging (or extending), etc. It is
> also possible to detect bug which must be fixed. It HAVE TO BE
> MAINTAINED.It is a cost, IMHO big cost. When no money is earned, with
> except of "internal income" it becomes a problem.
> Money shuffling around is inside of IBM, but as an effect WE PAY THIS
> money when buying new z/Series equipment. The more exotic (less copies
> sold in the world) system, the more expensive it is.
>
Are these generic ("regular") PCs, or IBM-branded PS/2? If the
latter, IBM has several choices:
o Keep the assembly line running to continue producing compatible
PS/2s
o Make the minimal changes to OS/2 necessary to accommodate (but
not necessarily exploit) hardware changes.
o Convert to a different OS. Not necessarily Linux; consider
various commercial OSes that are marketed to support embedded
software.
How about the OS that runs the Mars Rovers? It's commercial,
specialized, and likely more proportionate to the HMC task
than UNIX.
I agree; none of the options is certain to to be inexpensive.
-- gil
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