'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

bscott at ntisys.com bscott at ntisys.com
Mon Aug 12 20:01:26 EDT 2002


  Just adding a bit more fuel to the fire...  ;-)

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, at 1:57pm, kurth at usaexpress.net wrote:
> I'm just tired of the limits of the x86 line....640k,8gb.....why don't
> manf take into account that just because a 10Tb drive dosen't exist today,
> one will exist with 6 or 8 months...and plan.....no, that's too simple....

  The 640 KB limit arose from the original IBM-PC design, circa 1980.  
Since the 8086 didn't even have a memory manager, hardware needed to be
mapped directly into physical memory space, and IBM thought 640/384 was a
good place to draw the line between software and "reserved" memory.

  The 8 GB limit arose from the original IBM hard disk BIOS interface, circa
1984.  The original 10 megabyte hard disk drive seemed like a huge amount of
space at the time.  8000 megabytes was unimaginably huge.

  Both limits were eliminated, via backwards-compatible extensions, well
before they were encountered.  The only problem was some software (LILO,
anything from Microsoft) was never updated to use the new interfaces.

  It is common enough to encounter similar limitations in products from the
likes of Sun, SGI, HP, etc.  Contrary to what they would like you to
believe, they are not much better at looking ahead than anyone else.  
(There is some rather amusing commentary in the Linux kernel source, in
regards to various flaws on various platforms.  If you are bored some time,
try grepping the kernel source for the seven dirty words you can't say on
television.  It can be quite entertaining.)

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, at 8:39pm, Tom Buskey wrote:
> One advantage Sun (& Apple) have always had over PCs is quality.  They 
> are well built.

  With the IBM-PC platform comes choice.  That includes bad choices.  There
are a great many OEMs out there selling all manner of crap products.  Some
of it is so badly designed or manufactured it actually causes harm to person
and/or property.  However, there can also be found fair, good, and excellent
quality products.  With single-source solutions (like Sun and Apple), you
always know what the vendor is giving you, since you only deal with one
vendor.  Of course, if you happen to *dislike* what the vendor is giving
you, you are screwed.  I might add that a similar situation exists in the
software world today....

> My Sparc 20 had a memory error for a month because I was too lazy to shut
> it down & reseat the simm.  Can PCs do error correction like that?

  Sure, with ECC RAM.  :)

> you can install with a serial terminal

  Assuming you have hardware with serial console support, and an OS that can
handle it, this is quite possible on IBM-PCs as well.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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