11 Oct
2005
11 Oct
'05
9:20 p.m.
On 10/11/2005 at 8:34 PM Gil Carrick wrote:
Sure, but my point was that it normally runs without
one so that saying a
device requires secondary storage and a console to be considered as
containing an OS is not a definition that is very useful.
I don't believe that's what I was saying. My definition of a "non-PC"
PC stipulated that the device have sufficient I/O for some sort of secondary storage and
the ability to drive a console, in addition to being able to host a more-or-less commodity
OS.
Thus, my microwave oven fails in that there's no way to add a console and no secondary
storage. And I doubt that there's a commodity OS that would run on it. Same goes for
my trackball--it's got a Microchip PIC in it, but there's just not enough of the
other stuff there.
So the Linksys router would satisfy the requirement--it can run a commodity OS (LInux),
has secondary storage (Flash) and has sufficient I/O to drive a console (through the
RJ-45) . I suspect that you can just telnet to 192.168.0.1 (or some other IP address) and
get a login prompt.
I could run CP/M 86 (or even MS-DOS) on my little FAX box--it's got the I/O and
secondary storage.
Maybe we should stipulate that the secondary storage is nonvolatile...
Cheers,
Chuck