[rescue] Mac Appliance

[joshua d boyd]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 10:19:39AM -0400, Mike Dombrowski wrote:
> Home PC's don't need SMP. NT has been doing SMP for years. For that 
> matter let's beat down NetBSD and OpenBSD because AFAIK, they don't 
> have SMP support yet.

HomePC users do need SMP if home computers are going to be used the way
they were meant to be.  Sure, maybe running office doesn't require dual
CPUs, but if your computer does more than one thing at a time (like play
MP3s while you fix family photos to go in the latest family new letter,
while said letter prints on the connected WinPrinter) then SMP rocks so
much.

I think that Be had the right idea when the made 2 CPUs standard and
offered 4 (well only select people got the 4, then they discontinued the
hardware).  Be's prices weren't bad (unless they were selling at a loss),
so I can't really say why they chose to give up.

Even on Intel hardware, SMP is pretty affordable.  I was able to buy a
dual P2-350 for the going price of a P3-550, and I much prefer the dual
processors.  I do want to upgrade to at least dual 600s while I still can,
but getting a decent computer (thinking O2, maybe this fall, but
perhaps a SunBlade could do the job also) is a higher priority.

> >1986 - NeXT computer - custom ASICs (2) that greatly increase the 
> throughput
> >of the slow 68030 chip in the machine - why the heck can't Intel do 
> this on
> >their mobo's and chipset?  Instead, we get WinModems...
> 
> Hrm, so graphics accelerators like Geforce don't count? Nor sound 
> accelerators like SB Live? Intel CPUs are so stinking powerful that 
> they can simply brute force everything. God, that NeXT, they would 
> never put no hardware in a device and make the CPU do all the work 
> would they? Never, they'd never do anything like that. Wait, they did, 
> NeXT Laser Printer.

The cost savings of making the Sun laser printer dumb were so greate that
it was almost as cheap to use a dedicated IPC for rendering as putting a
renderer in the print.  And with an IPC for the printer, it could also do
DNS or other similar tasks.  The same might be true of the Next printer.
 
> >
> >Doug Engelbart showed off stuff in what, 1968?  that only now is stuff 
> we
> >can do with commercial systems, sorta
> 
> I'm not old/clued enough to catch the reference.

Doug invented the mouse.  However, since we have been able to get mice on
commecial computers for around 20 years now, I think Dave is probably
talking about something else.  He could be talking about early VR or NLS
(groupware hypermedia stuff) on any number of other things.  
 
> >Memory protection - invented in the 60s.  Does WinME have it?  Nope.
> 
> I thought 9x had partial memory protection but I may be wrong. Does 
> PalmOS have memory protection?

9x does have memory protection, but MS then took a shortcut that made it
rather ineffective.  I think that PalmOS might not, but I don't remeber
for sure.  So far, pretty much all my palm programming experience has been
in LispMe and PocketSmalltalk (which really rocks hard).
 
-- 
Joshua D. Boyd