[geeks] Microsoft Surface...

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mark <md.benson at gmail.com>
>Date: 2007/06/04 Mon PM 01:49:09 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Microsoft Surface...

>On 3 Jun 2007, at 21:20, William Kirkland wrote:
<snip>

>>  Sun also has a much better tendency to invent rather than acquire
>> technology.
>
>If anything Sun are way better at it than Apple even. They tend to  
>forge alliances to innovate and (unlike Apple and IBM) produce  
>significant and exciting results (well, they are if you're a  
>geek ;) ). I'm sure even they have acquired technology though. The  
>fact is everyone operates on the 'if we can't invent it we'll buy it'  
>policy - the difference between one company and the next is how much  
>they are willing to try and innovate before they give up and acquire.

Didn't Sun acquire some technology from Cray, around the time they started 
selling "mainframe class" systems?

<mouse bits snipped>

>> Oh, what about SCSI ... that was such a nice decision to go with
>> IDE ... today, we are still limited to two disk drives on each bus.
>
>I just got 2 new PCs at work an neither have PATA. It's dead. Forget  
>about it. SATA2 and SAS has blown it away. SATA is still not SCSI  
>(but SAS is, but enough confusing the issue!) but it's reduced  
>interrupt levels and cabling hassle to more than acceptable levels.

I don't think MS "choose" IDE, but they did support it, and enabled Mfg. to 
use this lower-cost technology... The last PC that MS specified like that was 
the ill-timed MSX[0] machine, which was popular in Asia, but not in the US...

The only real specifications I've seen from MS involve things like "Vista PCs 
require a DVD drive to install OS" or their various "MPC" certification 
levels (typically involving video display, sound and CD-ROM specifications), 
not the specific technology inside the machine (aside from, you know, x86-
compatible processors)

>> Microsoft chose IDE because Apple was suggesting SCSI. The only
>> reason that IDE is cheap, compared to SCSI, is the quantity of sales.
>> *IF* Microsoft would have shifted when they saw their decision to be
>> less than optimal, we could have 256 devices on one SCSI bus,
>> including the use of multiple computers on that same bus.
>
>I can get you're point, but at the same time SCS is harder to  
>configure, it has gremlins that give even seasoned SCSI veterans like  
>myself a headache. If you think educating people in how to set 1  
>Master/Slave jumper is hard, try explaining setting up SCSI buses and  
>using Binary ID codes to them. That's ASKING for them to glaze over :o).

IDE termination/cabling is much easier than SCSI - no one ever had to 
sacrifice a chicken to the gods[1] of IDE ;^)

Lionel

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

[1] http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22sacrifice+a
+chicken%22+scsi&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8