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Legacy-Free PCs
JeffM2001 writes "InformationWeek is running a story by Fred Langa which gives an overview of the ways to create a true-Legacy-free computer. Finally we can have a PC not based on twenty year old technology." Update: 04/07 17:34 GMT by T : Pages past the first one of this article seem just to loop; here's the printable version, which has the whole article in one go.
Down with PS/2! Down with RS232! Down with ECP+EPP! Down with floppy disks! Down with ATA/PI! Down with DB15/Analog!
Let's hear it for flash media formats, DVI, USB, SATA, and Firewire!
I'd prefer that my next motherboard contain only modern I/O ports. I wish that more vendors offered them, but they don't. The ones that do, do so at exorbitant prices.
am I the only one having issues getting to the other pages of the article? For some reason, no matter which page I click I never move off page 1. Tried 2 different browsers, page is b0rked.
ANYWAY, I fail to see why legacy is such a bad thing. Just because it's 20 years old doesn't mean it needs to go away. Using this guy's philosophy, Ethernet is 30 years old, and obviously that's a bottleneck compared to newer technologies like token ring and Turbo Arcnet. UNIX is over 30 years old, and obviously it's a bottleneck compared to the young NT kernel.
Just because the PC's core is 20 years old, I'm not sure why we suddenly need to drop everything and change it.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Yea, wasting hundreds of dollars per desktop is a real way to optimize business. Opening yourself up to more security flaws, locking yousrself into stricter licensing schemes, and forcing yourself to upgrade your hardware to deal with the bloat of the new OS are all real productivity and performance enhancers.
Repeat this process until someone in upper management gets hit with a clue stick, or your company has had to lay off half the IT staff just to upgrade to the amazing Windows 2003 .NET server with integrated XP/PLUS! desktops and Office 10 for just under $500,000.
The term "legacy system" is now used to describe any piece of technology which actually works as opposed to "modern system" which describes things that might work.
- legacy 80x86 CPU remains in place
- legacy IDE controller registers (themselves based on earlier Western Digital MFM and ESDI
controllers) are still in place (although the cable might be serial ATA)
- legacy BIOS emulation layer to allow DOS-type OS's and utilities run on legacy-free machines
Don't get me wrong, this is one of many possible steps in the right direction. But none of these steps are particularly new or innovative. Heck, look at the way EISA 80x86 config utilities could run on DEC Alphas that didn't have an 80x86 in them, *that* was innovative (although again in a legacy-compatible way).Our houses, cars, TVs, ovens, toasters, etc... nearly everything we use on a day-to-day basis... contain "legacy" technology.
Our medical profession uses techniques that are centuries old. Why? Because they work.
Merely because something is old does not mean it's bad. My old external modem still works and is as fast as any USB modem. How am I harmed by using this "legacy" technology for faxing? How is my computer slower?!
There are times when old technology should be replaced by new technology. But, merely because it's old does not mean it's bad. We shouldn't be upgrading simply for the sake of it.
What used to be called "time tested" is now called "legacy". We live in a disposable culture where if it's a couple years old, it's worthless. No wonder our music sucks. It took the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who years before they make their best works.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"[T]he Grail of many hardware engineers has long been a totally "legacy free" PC that can employ only fully modern, state-of-the-art, high-speed components and architectures. Such a PC would be faster, more compact, more reliable, and less expensive, as well as easier to manufacture and maintain."
<sarcasm> Yes, because we all know that new technology is automatically more reliable, smaller, less expensive and easier to manufacture/maintain. </sarcasm>
Reading through it more I see that what he's pushing for, EFI, is stored on "a special reserved area of the hard drive."
Errrr... Right. Can anyone else see some problems with that last bit?
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
...is not the keyboard ports or RS-232 or floppy drives or BIOS or any of the other things he mentions in his article.
I want a saner interrupt system. We're still using the same 16 interrupts they introduced with the PC-AT, with a little bit of PnP gloss over them. And most systems seem to have certain IRQs reserved away for their respective devices, so you can't use them-- don't have a floppy drive? Well, it'd be nice to let the PnP stuff use that IRQ for something else, but on many systems, you can't. And in a world where ever processor has a math-coprocessor _built in_, what's the point of reserving IRQ 13 for it? (Yes, the current design of Pentiums and Athlons require it. But _why_?)
Building a completely legacy free PC is pretty unlikely at this juncture, because the underlying architecture simply hasn't changed...
-JDF
You are obviously not a geek! How are you going to attach various home-brew devices to your PC? And what kind of modem are you going to use in case your DSL/Cable is broken? A Winmodem????
How does the existence of a serial port hurt you anyway? The only kind of PC legacy that really needs to be dealt with is the BIOS. Give me a LinuxBIOS with a good toolset. Everything else is just cosmetics.
I don't know in what vein you meant that, but it is in general its a worthless thought.
A legacy free OS is about as useful as a legacy free automobile. There is this thing called evolution which is how tools, machines, and software develop. Because of evolution you can easily look at a modern tool and compare its lineage to an old tool.
For example just because you can compare a modern laser cutter with a sharp rock some one used a five thousand years ago doesn't mean the new technology it worthless or even the same because it serves the same function.
Linux(the OS based on 30 year old tech) is NOT 30 year old tech. That's a stupid arguement to make. Fundementals don't change and throwing away 30 years of knowledge would be foolish.
Careful with this, folks.
During the last months, whenever news about Palladium or any other DRM system that required hardware support appeared, a common answer was: "so what? As long as we have our legacy motherboards, HDs, etc., we'll be fine. They can't force us to buy new DRM-enabled hardware".
Well, now they can.
Imagine that Microsoft decides that their next version of Windows requires hardware support from this new EFI standard that Intel is pushing. And imagine that EFI carries with it a DRM system.
And what if you are using Linux? Oh yes, it will certainly boot in a new EFI PC. As long as the developers sign a NDA.
Basically, the entertainment industry has an interest in seeing all the PCs obsolete and replaced with DRM-enabled hardware, and this "revolution" is their golden chance. Not that replacing obsolete technology isn't a bad thing, but I'd be very wary of anything "they" try to sell us under the cover of being "innovative, cheaper, efficient, modern"... (have you read the first page of the article? It sounds like a hype piece from Intel itself).
There is nothing wrong with 20 year old technology if there isn't anythig better (or standarized) to replace it.
You are still using the wheel arent you?
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
You're full of it. I've got a Sun Ultra 10 at home that uses OpenProm instead of a BIOS. Works great with not only Solaris, but also Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. Having *real* firmware instead of the off the shelf hack that IBM did way back when is not an immediate path to TCPA architectures. Having TCPA hardware (which by itself isn't so bad) is a more realistic path.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...the man who:
--trashed Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar;
--replaced Robert Tinney's stylish, elegant, light-hearted cover artwork with glossy pictures of products;
--transformed BYTE from an inch-thick publication with valuable technical content on every page into a buzzword-compendium for magazine managers who wanted to be able to rattle off the latest acronyms; and
--ran it into the ground.
Yes, a real authority.
Funny how, for instance, the incidents of friendly fire tend to get confirmed and reported on BBC hours before they get even an "alleged blue-on-blue incident" status on CNN.
Do you see reports and reporters on CNN, FOX or CBS asking tough questions about this war, why it got started, how it is conducted and what will come after the regime's collapse? Do the "in-bed"ded reporters make any distinction between themselves and the troops they're with? When BBC reporters talk about the coalition forces at least they talk about "them" not "us".
Supporting the troops is no excuse for bad journalism. Journalists' job is to be cynical, ask tough questions and look beyond what is said and shown in that Hollywood-designed briefing room at CentCom. I still chuckle at how Tommy Franks was for words when BBC World reporter practically called the footage they had been shown propaganda.
This is the part where some asshole will chime in with "But does it run Linux?"
Honestly though, this dumb question really has an underlying insight with the reason I run older hardware and everyone runs hardware that has geneology in legacy systems. It might not be the most efficient way to do things but it sure is the easiest and safest.
Take the obvious example cars. 100 and some odd years ago someone found a good way of putting a car together. Everyone took that concept and decided to build upon it. We could have started all over again, but that would have no guarentee of them being any good.
It may be better to build cars in the shape of a doughnut out of space age polymers. But I'll never know because I won't be the one driving them when the first batch of them explodes and kills everyone inside. I'll wait 5 years until they become tested legacy technology cars.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
No version of slackware will install if your usb keyboard and mouse are plugged into a usb hub. Actually, NO version of linux will install this way. Windows2000 is far superior to Linux in USB support, as it installs no problem.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
As I see PC architecture has long ago taken the most difficult steps to cut off the legacy PC architecture. Don't you remember PC99 and PC2000?
ISA was the backbone of the PC and cutting every single relation to that old bust was the movement that PC99 did, years ago. ISA was so essential in the legacy PC architecture. From the keyboard controller to PC speaker, serial and parrallel ports, BIOS and even the sytem clock and timer were all devices connected to the ISA bus. Even inside the chipsets back into 90s these parts of PC were actually connected to the ISA bus. PC99 declared that every trace of ISA bus was not acceptable. Devices that could theoritically departure from the ISA bus, were removed from the ISA bus inside the chipset and the remainings were pushed over the PCI-ISA Bridge. IDE drives were nolonger connected to the ISA bus at all and hence could reach much higher transfer rates. Slower devices and ISA slots that could be found in late 90s motherboards were all on the other side of that Bridge and not on the system bus which was PCI.
In todays PC architecture, PCI has been pushed like ISA was pushed onced. The real bus that devices talk to each other on the mother board are now names like V-Link that connect the south and North chipsets. internally there is nothing similar to PC99 today, let alone ISA bus and also there is absolutely nothing ISA in today's PC (it's a requirement of the specifications actually!).
So why do we have yet Legacy Ports? First, Legacy ports != Legacy PC. We need ports because we have lots of preferals that use them. Yet internally the ports do not work the way they did 20 years ago and are not a requirement of the design. They are now features, not integral parts of the PC and if needed can be eliminated without any trace. PC back in 90 was orders of magnitued simpler than what it is today and complexity of today's chipsets reval the CPU itself. Those parts of the logic supporting 'Legacy Ports' is much less than %1 of the North+South chipsets...
The last thing legacy, one would complain, was the BIOS and its not far from being totally replaced very soon....
"The installed base--that is, the mass of existing, older, in-use hardware--acts like a giant speed brake on the computer industry because businesses and users are loath to give up older equipment that's still functional, even if newer designs would perform better or faster."
Just like this says, this is about the computer industry - not about the users, the businesses that rely on computers or the businesses that develop software. It's about those who sell new systems.
Hell, what commodity industry wouldn't like to see the current technology stack thrown out the window every 20 years ? The perhaps largest change we see in consumer technology today is the current TV systems being replaced with HDTV. That too is driven by the industry, but has only become possible with the emergence of cheap DVD technologies and crappification of cinema theaters that makes the home experience better than the cinema experience. Consumers now feel that HDTV will give them a meaningful upgrade.
I doubt that very few home users feel that the 20 year old legacy is a problem. In fact, most users realize that there is little need to upgrade the core of the computer any longer, since performance for their basics needs isn't improved with new hardware (gamers excluded).
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
After all, the whole idea of a printable version is to serve up the content without all the blinking, annoying, distracting ads and other crap that adorn most sites.
While the printable version has more text content, it should have a much lower overhead on whatever dynamic content engine is being used to decypher cookies, do database lookups, and serve up the so-called targetted advertisements. All you've got is the header, the content, the footer, and perhaps a link back.
Link to printable version? YES!!!
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
just because a technology is old and/or looks similar to how it used to a couple decades ago doesn't make it invalid. That was exactly my point. My company still uses serial port devices. Just because its an old standard, its not invaild. The serial devices we use still do what they where intended to do, why replace them? I don't mean that we shouldn't have forward progress, I just mean to imply that not all standard changes are progress.
OK. Ignore the x86 architecture bit completely, and just look at the add-ons you're addressing - ISA slots, floppy drives, RS232 ports, parallel ports, PS/2 keyboard/mouse adapters.
For instance, RS232 ports: What exactly is wrong with an RS232 port? Why is it "worse" than a USB port? There's no difficulty in actually using an RS232 port - UARTs are cheap, they're brain-dead easy to interface to, and they support rather modern interface methods (DMA, etc.). They are, however, low speed - but of course, for low speed operations that's all you need. You will never need high-speed data transfer to your keyboard or mouse - they're inherently low data transfer devices, since humans are slow.
Same goes for ISA slots and parallel ports. They don't hold back the state of the art. They're add-ons. If you don't use them, they don't do anything. It's just a memory space that doesn't get accessed. If you're complaining about their implementation on current PCs (the fact that they sit in I/O space, take up IRQs, etc.) then you're complaining about the BIOS, not the peripherals. I really didn't see the point of replacing the PS/2 keyboard and mouse. They're just serial devices - they interface via the same method that UARTs, etc. get addressed, which is ridiculously easy to interface to.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with legacy components. Interfacing to a UART is trivial. Much more trivial than with USB, in fact. There's no reason a "clean" design of a PC couldn't have a serial port, ISA slot, ATA hard drives, and everything else.
Even the x86 architecture thing is 'not that bad'. Take the x87 architecture - everyone complains about the FXCH instruction, because it IS stupid, but on the P3 and Athlon (but not the P4 - one reason the P4's FP sucks) that instruction's 'free' - it takes 0 clock cycles to process. There's some overhead involved with it, but it's not clear to me that the small gain from fixing the overhead loss would offset the large loss of not being compatible with large portions of x87 software. And it's not clear to me that the overhead couldn't be compensated for in some other way, as well.
not to be pendantic, but if a Serial Port is NOT a "contraption that somebody (sic) dreamed up" that how exactly did it come into existence?
The non-legacy tech mentioned in the article is limited to tech that is created by Intel.
The article doesn't mention Firewire/1394, Hypertransport, Infiniband, Serial ATA, etc.
In other words, according to the article, "port" of the future is USB, the "slot" of the future is PCI Express, the BIOS of the future is EFI, so perhaps we should infer that the CPU of the future is Itanium 2.
Nevertheless, I don't mean to suggest that the article is intentionally biased toward Intel, since it doesn't really do a good or thorough job of promoting Intel-developed technologies. Perhaps the author just didn't think to research the new technologies which are in PCs that have been shipping for the past year.
"There is nothing fundamentally wrong with legacy components."
Yes, there is something "wrong" with legacy components. You can't easily establish DRM on standardized and established technology.
Hardware has gotten better over the last 20 years
Software hasn't
I'm not kidding, folks. Hardware has obvoulsly gotten better - faster, more reliable, cheaper, simpler to interconnect and configure. The hardware available to research labs is at most one generation ahead of what's sold to the masses.
On the software front, though, remarkably little has changed in the last twenty+ years, except for stuff moving from research labs out to the real world, and consolidation behind the Microsoft "standard". How much difference is there, fundamentally, between an Alto running Smalltalk and a PC running XP (other than hackability and stability, of course)? The major difference is that the Alto could only interact with the small community of other Altos, whereas the XP box can hang out with the much larger community of PCs.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
First off, I like certain parts of legacy. Like,
not being able to
a) use my laptop as serial console (it has no serial
port any more)
b) switch my IBM "clickety-click" keyboard on my
laptop (it has no PS/2 port any more - only
two USB, one VGA and one parallel)
is icky. I heavily dislike it. My IBM keyboard
weighs about six kilopond, but that's what makes
it good.
OTOH, think about all the "small" OSes, i.e.
non-Windows and non-GNU/Linux.
Will they ever work on those computers?
Also, since the design changes, you can never
know if TCPA is already inside.
I hope I can shed some light on it, and I'm
just trying to tell people to not forget their
own past.
I still like MS GW-BASIC 3.22 - I was 8 when
I learned it (and did not even understand a
single word of English; I started to learn
English at the age of 12).
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
That having been said it's a lot easier to slap RS232 on a device than it is USB... but that's just a question of time before the USB chips become as cheap/easy as UART's...
When is that going to be? Let's try never.
I designed and built a UART in my first digital design class. The point isn't that cheap==easy, the point is that the protocol is so much simpler for RS232 than it is for USB.
Creating a USB device requires all sorts of stuff to comply with the standard. They don't put anti-lock brakes on wheelbarrows and never will, no matter how cheap they get. It doesn't make any sense.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I see a deeper issue with this apparent obsession with "legacy-free," and it has NOTHING to do with "holding back the state-of-the-art."
First, consider this; All the peripherals mentioned -- ISA slots (which, admittedly, I wouldn't mind seeing go away), serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard-and-mouse ports -- are all dirt cheap, and dead easy to implement. The technology to do so has been around for decades. It is proven, it's stable, and it's all (as others have pointed out) add-ons. Having add-ons does NOTHING that I can see to inhibit the "evolution" of the core microprocessor and support logic.
UNLESS, that is, you're Microsoft or Hollywood. Consider all the noise in recent years about digital copyrights, copy protection, ad nauseum. Consider the vast array of add-ons Out There that let consumers burn CDs, DVDs, make tape backups, etc., adding to Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen's ongoing nightmares. Consider further that Microsoft is one of several companies in a partnership that dictates PC hardware standards.
Now, how do you wrest control away from the computer consumer, in a slow and insidious fashion, so they won't even guess what's happening until its too late? In other words, how do you turn those pesky general-purpose PCs into something that will still do everything Joe or Jane SixPack will want it to, but that exerts all kinds of copy controls and limitations when you hook one of those annoying CD or DVD burners to it?
Why, that's easy. Disguise the removal of those annoyingly versatile, general-purpose, and (most importantly) difficult-to-copy-control features like serial, parallel, SCSI, and others as moving towards "legacy-free" systems!
What's more, let's remake the operating system so that add-on peripherals have to be blessed by Microsoft in order to even run with Windows, today and more than ever in the future! Sure! Just let Uncle Steve, Uncle Bill, and the RIAA/MPAA take care of EVERYTHING, and you won't ever have to worry about violating copyrights, or learning ANYthing more about computers than where the "On" switch is, ever again. Trust us, we know what's best for You!
Consider that, in the not-too-distant future, might we see a "PC" that has NO expansion slots? Just Redmond and Hollywood-approved "ports?"
Yes, I probably am letting my paranoid side run rampant again. However, as I said in another post; If the consumer crowd wants to let themselves be led around by the nose, fine. That's their privilege. All I ask is don't force this "Legacy-Free!" crap down the throats of those of us who don't need it, don't want it, and can't possibly make use of it for our applications.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
For instance, examine the following paragraph from the article:
Okay, so what is a BIOS? BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System. It has (limited) drivers for interfacing to the hardware, and a user interface. In essence, it is an operating system to the same degree as DOS; DOS hands control of the machine to a single program, and will never get it back unless that program makes interrupt calls. This is why x86 assembler on some flavor of DOS is still one of the most popular platform for "embedded" and "industrial" systems, mostly for machine control and the like. Automotive smog test systems are almost always PCs. Color matching systems, likewise.
So the BIOS is already an OS, it is secure, and furthermore I have seen BIOS entirely in flash ROM which has a GUI, optionally mouse-driven interface. (A basic mouse driver is trivial to write, especially if all you support is PS/2 mice, which all use the same protocol.) Doing USB and whatnot is much more difficult and your flash might actually have to be, like, a couple megabytes in size rather than the usual 512kB or 1MB.
Furthermore the crap intel is proposing runs on the hard drive. This is a big reason why Compaq machines are such a pain in the ass as it is; Many of them don't have a normal PC BIOS with a configuration tool in them (though my Compaq Presario 1692 Laptop does) and you have to use the stuff on the hard drive. This means (for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake) that if you don't have a working hard drive connected, you cannot configure the system.
As for the "limited, arcane, and text-only" BIOS screens; There are BIOSes with built in help, like pretty much all of them these days. Most of the help isn't filled in, for whatever reason. Also, it's always arcane, there is quite simply no way around that, because computer hardware is complicated! Memory has timings for latency, for example. The SPD ((E)E)PROM will solve that problem for you but ram without it is cheaper...
Let's see, what else can I pick apart in his article?
Actually, the reason USB never took off is because all early implementations of USB have terrible latency and don't even begin to approach their supposed peak bandwidth. Newer systems still don't get it right; Games which are highly CPU-dependent (like Unreal and its descendants) will cause your mouse input to choke, and sometimes even caused missed keypresses. On MODERN implementations! This is unacceptable. USB is better technology than AT keyboards (After all, PS/2 is the same as AT, with a different plug) and PS/2 mice (which are just serial ports at a lower voltage, 5V rather than 12V IIRC) but so much effort has been expended on making those lega
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What I never understood was this:
-Industry is so keen on getting us to abandon our PS/2 keyboard and Centronics parallel ports.
-In theory, fewer connectors and less space taken on the chipset components should be cheaper
-Yet, the only "legacy-free" parts I see are either in OEM systems (and generally not for individual consumption), or sold to enthusiasts as wow special at a high price.
I can get decent full-legacy Athlon mainboards at USD 50-70. Why should I pay twice as much if not more for a legacy-free board, and actually get LESS?
Aside: if you're freeing all that mainboard space, can't you find something better to do with it than 144 USB ports? The whole point of USB is that you can use hubs and daisy-chaining so one or two ports should be enough.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Serial ports don't need to be rebooted to clear their frequent errors!
Serial ports don't need to be within 9 feet of the device they attach to.
Next!
I play UT2003, a very fast multiplayer FPS. To me having my Logitech dual optical strung up to the legacy port is crucial. An USB mouse is slower, as the PS/2 signals are better synced, 'closer' to the CPU and waste less ticks per instruction.
I definetly don't want my mouse and keyboard gettin' the hickups in midst of a fast multiplayer hackfest. And be it only for a split second.
I tried USB once, cause I kinda like the idea of hotplugging (I use my printer via USB and it's a breeze), but it just doesn't cut it for signal intensive input devices. No fscking way are serious gamers going to switch to non-legacy mice any time soon.
Since this guy is jacking of on USB, EFI and whatnot of Intel stuff and goes on bullshitting about how legacy is slowing down PC evolution 'cause people don't buy USB mice (who and what gave him that idea???) I have a hard time taking him for granted. He's most certainly a payed-off Intel advocate.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
@ uso
XP/2000/NT have 'emulation' of a DOS command prompt. They are not legacy, but instead are just being 'clever' (some may argue this).
Under your definition there is no OS that isn't legacy. MacOS X run on Unix, all Windows variants have a command prompt of some means......, BeOS...., oS2... Linux, BSD, Solaris.......
If I built a totally new OS with no command prompt, yet someone created a terminal emulation program or DOS command prompt emulation program, and I included it in my OS, would that make my OS legacy. Think about it before answering.