[rescue] Some days ....

[Dave McGuire]

On Sunday, June 8, 2003, at 02:10 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>>> From: Phil Stracchino <alaric at caerllewys.net>
>>> To be fair, it hasn't been that bad in a looooooooong time ....  and
>>> even then, at least half of it was the dain-brammaged OS's fault.
>>
>> ummm... IMHO PC hardware is seriously lacking in IRQs and DMA 
>> channels....
>
> Amen, brother.  IBM really copped out by just daisychaining two
> 8-channel IRQ chips in the AT architecture.  They should have built in 
> a
> single 32-channel (or better yet, 64-channel) chip, IMHO.

   That would have been good, but bear in mind the original PC wasn't 
designed to be scalable at all.  The fact that the industry decided to 
adopt it as a de-facto standard was stupidity on the part of the 
industry, not IBM.  (not trying to defend IBM here, but this is just 
the way it is)

   I think they did a very good job for a cheap "throwaway" design done 
by junior engineers.  The production cost of the PC was almost nothing; 
there are exactly *zero* components on the original PC motherboard 
design that were more than a few dollars apiece.

          -Dave

--
Dave McGuire             "I've grown hair again, just
St. Petersburg, FL           for the occasion."       -Doc Shipley