[rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

[Lionel Peterson]

> From: Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net>
> Date: 2004/04/29 Thu PM 06:55:52 GMT
> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Compaq Proliant 8000

> At the risk of sounding like I'm advocating windows, if someone made a
> Opteron machine that did away with the PC compatibility stuff, it would
> probably be fairly easy to write a Windows XP/2003 HAL for it, just like
> SGI did for the 320 and 540 machines, and the users would likely never
> notice any compatibility issues (unless the design also required OF
> cards, in which case they would have to hunt for special PCI/AGP cards).

That would limit the useful life of the "computer" to the useful life of the last OS ported onto it (assuming each new OS release required a new HAL - does WinXP still have a HAL, it is a single platform OS now, excepting SNMP-baby boxes ;^)

> Not to mention getting linux, freebsd, or NetBSD onto the thing.

That would be a completely new port for the OS (not the userland goo outside the kernel), I suspect - putting a PC OS on an incompatible platform would require a significant effort (at the kernel level)...