30 Aug
2006
30 Aug
'06
1:46 p.m.
Maybe pentium for "non-PC" - I once had a
DEC server which had 3 486DX2/66
CPUs and I think it was sufficiently non-compatible enough that it couldn't
run Windows (but there might've been a special MSDOS for it, tho, I'm not
sure) -- and I *think* they'd made some CPU cards that could take a
Pentium, but this might just conjecture & bitrot playing tricks on me... ;-)
I think the key thing here is that by the time the Pentium hit the scene,
companies were learning to leverage others R&D, and breaking free of the NiH
Syndrome. While BEOS started out as a very cool, very custom dual PPC box,
they quickly figured out that Apple offered a more realistic target, and
when Apple failed to buy them out (I still think that was a mistake), and
locked them out of the G3, they moved to x86. NeXT started life with very
cool 68k boxes, but expanded to Sun, HP, and x86 HW by the time Apple bought
them. Even Apple is now running on what is practically a PC, with just
enough differences to keep people from running Mac OS X on "beige boxes".
Take a look at prior to PCI, and even for quite a while after PCI came out,
most Workstation companies had thier own slot format. That proved to be bad
business sense. Everyone moved to PCI, but largely had thier own firmware
which required buying the cards from them. How long did it take Sun to move
off of S-Bus to PCI? Yet they've already moved their workstations to PCI-X
and PCI-Express. Does anyone use non-Industry standard cards anymore?
It doesn't matter that people like us like choices, as the Industry matures,
the differences will shrink even further. How many Workstation companies
with superior versions of Unix are now pushing Linux? Or are just plain
dead. I for one would *LOVE* to see a viable OS that isn't Windows or Unix
(let's be serious Mac OS X is now Unix with a different face), and isn't
POSIX compliant.
Zane