[rescue] Best brains: Ã? Dead keyboard ports on PC hardware

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Mon, 2007-06-25 at 11:34 +0200, Clemson, Chris wrote:
> > > Can anyone confirm that win2k pro (not server) will support
> > more than two
> > > cores?
> >
> > I have no idea about multi-core processors, but I can verify that
> > Windows 2000 Pro won't support more than two physical chips.
> > I tried in
> > one of my PC Server 704s once upon a time.
> 
> Isn't this just a licensing restriction?
> Back in mists of time I remember reading that you could upgrade from one
> version of windows to the next that would allow >2 CPUs to be supported, even
> though the newer version supposedly only would support 2.
> Unfortunately I can't remember if this was from NT 3.51 to 4, or 4 to 2000 and
> I can't find any links about it :(

My understanding is that it is a licensing restriction that MS enforced
by requiring a custom HAL to be shipped with bigger machines from the
hardware vendor.

In other words, you couldn't just go to MS and buy a license upgrade to
4 or 8 CPUs.