PeeCee clones; was:PCW's 25 worst tech products

On 6/27/2006 at 7:11 PM Jim Leonard wrote: What makes you think this was a "stupid decision"? The MCA bus was capable of *40MB/S*, which at the time was rather remarkable. ISA is amazingly slow. And the business desktop market wanted smaller machines. Part of the intent of MCA, however misguided, was to eliminate DIP switches and jumpers, which were causing a lot of support calls. With the config files for MCA, that was to suppose to reduce support calls. The only real malfunction of the MCA bus was that unless the cards were made to very precise standards (and I think the tolerance was 1 or 2 mils, according to the design guides), improperly positioned cards could smoke a machine. MCA prototyping cards were available for about $40/ea. And unless you wanted to do the really high speed stuff, a couple PALs would suffice. Unlike PCI which requires a FPGA for any kind of bus compatibility (although I have seen some PAL-only designs for really crude prototypes). Everyone seems to think every damn card, bus, and system made should be backwards to the AND gate. Get over it, move in to the 90's. At the very least. --jc