Sorry this reply is a bit late in arriving:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:16, Matthew Gregan wrote:
> At 2005-01-16T22:23:36+1300, Wesley Parish wrote:
> > I concluded during the nineties that the general purpose computer was
> > somewhat clumsily designed, and should instead be split up into
> > function domains, with each function domain being assigned one primary
> > function and being made to do it well;
>
> During the nineties, when lots of now-defunct companies were hyping the
> earl{y,ier} attempts at set-top boxes for the "average user"?
> Insightful.
I got the idea off learning about the PC's "architecture" and the elegant
concept of Unix treating all devices as files, while the SCSI bus/channel
went ahead and did just that, in hardware. Turns out I was just a few
decades behind IBM - they'd already established the channel as the workable
means of handling IO.
>
> > with the bus being replaced by a network. Preferably something like
> > as the Fibre Channel, with its several supported protocols - HIPPI,
> > SCSI, TCP/IP, etc.
>
> HIPPI? Over Fibre Channel? Seems like an unusual and unrealistic
> choice, particularly for a product aimed at the home market. In fact,
> even the suggestion of Fibre Channel seems unusual and unrealistic.
> Which variant, copper or optical? It seems like expecting a home user
> to carefully handle delicate optical cable for their "simple to use"
> computer/applicance is a bit much to ask, not to go into the cost of
> using FC as a solution for this problem domain.
Well, copper for the home devices. The advantage of FC is that it's got at
least three "architectures" - arbitrated loop, one-2-one-2-one-2-... which is
what most SANs are based on; the second one I've momentarily forgotten; and
the third is the fabric, which means many-2-many.
Basically, the idea was keyboards are end-nodes - with their own CPUs - and
"PC"s are central fabric nodes. Keyboards fall in the general category of
IO, as do the monitor, sound, removable disks/discs, etc. Hard Drives are
storage, as are tapes, etc.
Whether they fall into the arbitrated loop or the fabric categories depends on
what you expect will be connected up to them.
>
> > That way, much of the configuration kaffuffle would cease to exist, since
> > nodes on a network don't need to configure other nodes in order to
> > communicate with them.
>
> Hand waving doesn't make any of the hard problems go away.
But if the details of the configuration, etc, are maintained on the relevant
node, like the Postscript printer, then sending a postscript file to said
printer means you don't need to worry about configuration of the printer.
You might need to worry about it being plugged in, online, etc, but what the
printer does is defined in its postscript interpreter.
That's not hand-waving.
>
> Cheers,
> -mjg
Wesley Parish
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
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You ask, what is the most important thing?
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