[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Dr Robert Pasken]

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Mike Meredith wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:52:15 -0500 (CDT), Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >
> > Didn't Sun acquire some technology from Cray, around the time they
> > started selling "mainframe class" systems?
>
> Yes. They acquired the division that built the CS6400 and starting on
> what would become the E10000. At least it *looks* from the outside that
> Sun acquired technology with that buyout. The inside story may be
> slightly different ... the CS6400 was very Sun-like using some of the
> design from the SPARCcenter 2000, and there's a hint that Cray and Sun
> were working closely together.
>
> > I don't think MS "choose" IDE, but they did support it, and enabled
> > Mfg. to use this lower-cost technology... The last PC that MS
> > specified like that was the ill-timed MSX[0] machine, which was
> > popular in Asia, but not in the US...
>
> I'm not sure how much Microsoft was involved in the MSX specification.
> It looks more like a Japanese initiative that they allowed Microsoft to
> get very close to. Some confusion may be due to the fact that the head
> of the MSX-consortium was an ex-Microsoft executive.
>
> > >I can get you're point, but at the same time SCS is harder to
> > >configure, it has gremlins that give even seasoned SCSI veterans
> > >like myself a headache. If you think educating people in how to set
> > >1 Master/Slave jumper is hard, try explaining setting up SCSI buses
> > >and using Binary ID codes to them. That's ASKING for them to glaze
> > >over :o).
>
> SCA solves pretty much all of those problems.
>
> > IDE termination/cabling is much easier than SCSI - no one ever had to
> > sacrifice a chicken to the gods[1] of IDE ;^)
>
> No? I guess if you mess with SCSI too much you'll smear any disk cable
> with chicken blood (or goat's blood if you're feeling paranoid) just in
> case :)
>
Strange , I've never had any luck with IDE/ATPAI/PATA/SATA drives. Trying
to add more than one requires sacrificing three vestal vigins, two
graduate students and a partridge in a pear tree. SCSI just requires
that the header jumpers be different, plug in the signal and power cables
and it works. What is it with cable select, master, slave, cable with a
twist, none of which are consistent even with the same manufactuer. Just
bought a 300gb 15rpm Fiber channel drive on ebay for $150, plug it into
the backplane and it works. Try that with a SATA drive