7 Dec
2008
7 Dec
'08
10:56 a.m.
Tony, I'll be very harsh on that: I see
nothing wrong in using PCs and
Windows. These are tools, not a religious oppinion. I bought it, it works.
What is the matter?
The p[roblem is that (a) I can't afford it, (b) I can't afford to
maintain it, and (c) if/when it stops working, I haven't a clue how to
fix it.
I think this talk of "proprietary OS" has come too far away from
reality. You have tools that costed much more than a PC with windows, and I
Indeed I do. My lathe, for example. But that came with full exploded
diagrams and parts lists (oh, and a wiring diagram for the motor starter
box). I understand how that works. And while I certainly don't have the
skill to make many of the parts myself, I am capable of seeing which
one/ones are defective, I am capable of measuing run-out, etc and I am
capable of buying the right spares form the makers.
believe you don't have source code of the
programs, OS and
BIOS/Microcode/whatever of your VAX.
I do for the PDP11s. I have an Ancient Unix source license, I have the
microcode sources in the printset, I have the boot ROM sources and even
scheamtics (it's a diode matrix ROM, I actually have schematics showing
which diodes are fitted for various bootstraps).
I do, mostly, for the HP98x0. I have schematics. I have an annotated
source lising for the CPU microcode. I have the patents which give much,
if not all, of the firmware source
I do for this PC. I have the schematics for everything apart from the
hard disk. I have the BIOS soruces. And of course I have the linux source
I'm not up to nor against microsoft. Windows
for me is a tool, and it
just works. I paid a price to use a tool and I'm using that to earn money.
For me a tool has to work, and it has to be pleasant to use. If it isn't,
I use something else. And the few times I've used Windows, I've found it
to be extremely unreliable.
I also have an aversion to using things I can't fix when they go wrong.
Becuase they tend to go wrong at the most inconenient moment.
And, in the spirit of the "free OS", you can
always write a tool for
whatever you use. Ah, you're not up to that? So bad...you get what you pay
for :)
Well, at one time manufactuers of programmable chips were very bad about
providing full documentation on how to program them. I have yet to find a
completely 'open' FPGA or CPLD -- meaning a device where I can get,
without signing an NDA or similar, full specification on how to send bits
to the device (what pins to wiggle and how, what are the critical
timings, what voltages to apply, etc) and also how to turn my design into
those bits. Microcontrollers do tend to be more open (the PICs that I've
used were fully documented), but I am not sure if this ICD system is.
-tony