[LUAU] more participation

[Jim Thompson]

On Mar 24, 2006, at 1:07 PM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:

> Jim Thompson wrote:
>>
>> Interrupt routing isn't that difficult, until you have to deal  
>> with all the legacy IRQ crap from the days of ISA/EISA buses.
>>
>> then its insane.
>>
>> So, PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, SPARC and x86 sans support for ISA are all  
>> equivalent in terms of low-weirdness during install of a new card.
> I remember IBM purportedly tried to deal with this problem by  
> introducing its "proprietary" MCA (MicroChannel Architecture),  
> which actually contributed to the beginning of the downfall of the  
> mighty Blue.  I had wondered what the world might have become had  
> (the old) IBM not been so stupidly greedy.  (Or greedily stupid?)

its history now.  They were, and they did.

We got PCI (with all of its flaws) as a market-driven result.  (Well,  
technically EISA was the response to MCA, but it sucked too.)

Do remember to tell your grandkids about parallel ports (and running  
Ethernet and/or SCSI over same), IrDA, z3950, the difference between  
a 80386 and a 386SX, .vs a 486SX and a 486DX, floppy disks (all sizes  
and kinds), Prodigy, PKArc, the Transputer, ... I could go on.

"Mighty Blue" got knocked down via their Consent Decree, and by not  
correctly following the head-fake offered by Microsoft (OS/2 Warp .vs  
Windows NT).   I don't think the MCA debacle caused them that much pain.

In any event, IBM found themselves relegated to all but obscurity  
until they "found" linux.

IBM could do some very interesting things with "Cell".   It could be  
cool if all of your high-end
consumer electronics acted as one large computational grid.  It would  
be still cooler if IBM develops a distributed linux for these devices.

Sony has already announced that the PS3 will run linux on its pre- 
installed 60GB HD, including support for the SPEs.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3148775

So now we have a real war to watch:  XBox Live (Windows) .vs PS3 (Linux)
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/cell/downloads_doc.html

Will FOSS win out overproprietary software?

Jim