Re: rtVAX300 .. need help..

[John Wilson <wilson%dbit.com@localhost>]

From: Roger Ivie <rivie%ridgenet.net@localhost>

>People coming from a PC background don't understand how unusual the PC
>is in having *absolutely* *every* *thing* nailed down. It is not
>normally the case that a wide range of hardware has the same registers
>in the same places. It only happened in the PC because PC-DOS was so
>extraordinarily weak.

All true, but I've always seen that as one of the PC's few superpowers.
Hardware guys are WAAAAY better at compatibility than software guys.
The amount of motherboard silicon it takes to maintain a few dozen legacy
I/O ports for old time's sake is negligible, so they just do it since that
gets it working w/o adding to the SW maintenance headache.  I love the fact
that code I wrote 30 years ago still runs fine on a modern PC -- as long
as it's booted under real DOS which is too stupid to stop it from working.
But real OSes are moving targets (HOW could Linux remove the brk() call?!
Does OpenGL 3.x seriously want glBegin/glEnd *removed*?  And Windows has a
long history of having Big Thing N-1 limp along in a half-assed compatibility
box while MS totally loses interest in Big Things N-2 and earlier).

John Wilson
D Bit