18 Oct
2007
18 Oct
'07
11:11 p.m.
On 19 Oct 2007 at 1:19, Dave McGuire wrote:
I know that, but my point was that there are plenty of boxes out
there that don't have PCI slots (PeeCees later than a certain vintage
generally do). Neither to laptops, notebooks and whole bunch of
other platforms. Since the cost of silicon at this point is fairly
negligible, why not expand the base of possible users to its maximum?
Cheers,
Chuck
While I can
support your idea, one might as well make the floppy
controller a standalone device, given the availability of
microprocessor cores. In either case, new software drivers weill be
needed, as the legacy floppy depends on the old ISA-style DMA (does
that exist for any other reason in modern systems without ISA
slots?). One could supply local RAM instead, but what with the PCI
interface logic, the drivers and the board cost, it might as well be
a USB, Firewire or ethernet device that could hook to darned near
anything, not just PeeCee boxes.
PCI doesn't imply PeeCee. I have a metric buttload of PCI slots
around here, and not a PeeCee to be seen. (well, except a Sun-badged
Opteron box)