On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 7:56 PM, Michael B. Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > However, let us remember, the original IBM PC. IBM published all the info and > there were many copies. However, the original BUS design was crap. Eventually, > that caused a re-design of the entire PC (leaving out a lot of history there, > but true > nonetheless).
Right, but some of the history you leave out is significant. During the times of transition, it was common to have more than one interface type in a system. ISA and EISA co-existed, ISA and VLB co-existed, ISA and PCI co-existed, PCI and PCIe co-existed. One saw PCI, ISA, and VLB on the same mobo. Checking now, I find boards with PCIe, PCI, and ISA slots.[1] At no point did everything need to be thrown away. There was no "flag day".[3] If we want to posit the modular phone, we might posit such an upgrade path there, too.[4] Now, durability of the interconnect, that might be a bigger problem. Phones get beat up a lot more than most modular connectors. Another technical issue is that antennas need to be of certain sizes and shapes to work properly. You can't just have a tiny block for an antenna and get good performance. -- Ben [1] Dang ISA just won't die.[2] [2] There's a reason for this beyond the usual legacy inertia. ISA is basically just most of the 8086 CPU pins brought to a card edge connector, which makes it cheap and easy to hook into, as long as you can live with the limitations. [3] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/flag-day.html [4] We have to speculate, as absolutely no technical information is provided on Phonebloks.[5] [5] I strongly suspect technical detail simply doesn't exist, and the whole thing was dreamed up by someone as a neat concept, but without much understanding of the engineering needed.
