[rescue] [geeks] Last Call - Ultra 5/10 parts

[Andrew Jones]

On 03/10/2014 11:35 PM, Mouse wrote:
>
>> PCI was arch-independent,
>
> Pff!  Why do Alphas have an x86 emulator in ROM?

...to execute x86 option ROMs on PCI cards.  The Alpha systems wanted to 
play x86 ball.  This is not a weakness in the PCI standard.

Sun, Apple, SGI, HP, etc seem to have done just fine with OpenBoot, 
OpenFirmware, proprietary code, etc in option ROMs.

The standard was really, truly arch-independent and, as I understand it, 
relatively easy to glue to whatever you had at hand.  This in no way 
stopped vendors from putting weird stuff in the standards-mandated ROMs.


>
>> (Does anyone really praise the last-generation Sun homebrew graphics,
>> the MAJC stuff?)
>
> I don't recognize the MAJC name.  But I praise very little in the
> graphics world from the last decade or two, because it's frickin' ALL
> undocumented.

MAJC was the CPU architecture on Sun's final-generation graphics cards: 
XVR-1000 and friends.  Fancy CPUs with GDDR were passed off as graphics 
cards and sold as late as 2007.

They weren't just undocumented, I'm not sure what they were good for. 
Even with Sun's drivers, they were not speed champs.