Functionally, the PowerPC tree forked a long time ago. Way back when, before the Linux kernel had any USB support, for example, Mackerras' tree had an incorporation of Inaky Perez Gonzales' USB stuff so that iMacs could boot. The USB style changed about a year and a half ago to support the newer stuff Linus was doing (Linus having rejected Inaky's USB code). But the support's always been way ahead on PowerPC of what it was on x86 -- and of necessity.
That makes the forking, what, 2 1/2 years old?
Yeah, it re-integrates from time to time, but the official kernel tree hasn't been the place to get a *usable* PowerPC kernel in like forever.
PS - don't get me started on support for weird PowerPC chipsets. Just don't.
As Jobs said in his MacWorldExpo keynote, they expected to sell 10k of the MacOS X Public Beta and they sold 100k. The release won't ship until 3/24, but it is really solid.
I've had two issues with it:
1) Connecting from an old Mac to the X box using FileSharing over TCP/IP caused the Mach kernel's AFP layer to harf. To get the service going again, I had to restart (kernel services being a bummer that way). This was a known limitation; I just didn't know it.
2) There was some issue where it wouldn't create additional terminal windows and, when pushed, it eventually wound up with a kernel panic. I sent in the backtrace. This was apparently also a known problem with some kind of memory leak.
Minor stuff really, not problems I'd have in everyday use.
But for using, hard, a beta OS for a couple months, not a bad track record. It will replace Linux as my home desktop OS (already has for the most part); it has more creature comforts to offer and, with open source under the hood, little of the prior MacOS's disadvantages.
I first heard before the opening of business today, but didn't have confirmation until a few minutes ago, that Linuxcare also went through another (its fourth) round of layoffs today.
Early rumors suggested the layoff would be approximately 15-20 people, but I haven't heard any specifics.
When companies go on a hiring rampage (as all the Linux companies did) and then lay people off, what does that mean?
That they expected business to materialize that would cover the cost of the salaries of the people and it didn't happen that way.
It's not a personal thing. It's not the demise of Linux. Linux existed before any Linux-related companies. If they all died off today, Linux would still grow, albeit a bit more slowly.
No one knows the future; companies have to make guesses about future business and how to prepare for it and those guesses may be wrong.
Consider the alternative many of these companies faced: at the time, putting Linux on your resume in Silicon Valley virtually guaranteed a job. What would happen if they *hadn't* expanded and the business came rolling in? They'd have found they couln't deliver the service and they couldn't hire it at a price where they could make a profit. So they went with the plan of hiring the talent early, which sounds prudent to me.
There's also the part that no one really wants to admit: a good part of the increase in demand for Linux was the dot com boom. The side effect to this is that the market for Linux services was largely in the dot com sector, the exact sector that Linuxcare wasn't trying to go after in the first place. Everyone (with any sense) knew that bubble would burst, they just didn't know when. Well, I think the dot com craze can now be officially declared as dead as disco.
The reality is that the dot com sag hit every Linux company hard. It also hit a lot of other sectors of the economy hard.
After all, people in those companies that didn't IPO won't be buying those fully-loaded limited edition PT Cruisers, now will they?
C'mon guys, no one's saying that it's the end of *cars* because DaimlerChrysler is laying off more people than there are in the entire Linux sector.
All it means is that the Linux bubble is over.
This is a good thing.
I know this is heresy here, but MacOS had Hebrew support long before Windows did. Before Windows shipped even.
And, when MacOS X comes out, you can have the warm fuzzies associated with knowing that, even though you're running on a proprietary GUI layer, you are running an open source OS underneath.
Do not allow everyone to see the bid history of on an item. Only allow the seller to see this, and only after the auction is over.
As an often losing bidder, I would suggest that one allow not only the seller but also ALL bidders on that item to see the bid history. Very often, I want to know when I lost the bid. For example, recently an item I wanted went way over my limit in the last hour -- I want to see what happened.
I know why Ebay lists all bidders: so that you can see that the seller themself is not inflating the bid price. Given that you want the buyer to know this, how would you accomodate that need for information and balance it against the privacy you suggest?
As a great many transactions are now purchased through the "Buy Now" option, in which only the first bidder can elect this option, they're now circumevnting the possibility of having a losing bidder. Plus, it's a faster forum for buyer and seller and thus would also accelerate (somewhat) Ebay's revenue stream.
I've had a LOT of good transactions over Ebay and may have had the first fraudulent one (after several hundred positives) a couple of weeks ago.
Over a two-hour period, a new Ebay seller (who was subsequently yanked from Ebay) sold $56,000 worth of stuff in 60-odd auctions. Some of the people sent money right away via Paypal. Others of us took a wait-and-see attitude. So far, I haven't heard of any one of these people actually receiving the goods.
Cost is a big factor. Broadband isn't even available in most households. Thus, putting in ethernet where it would benefit relatively few people would make it cost more for everyone else. In a price-sensitive market, this would be a Bad Thing.
Even if a person does have broadband, not everyone is set up to have either multiple IPs or a router and private IPs to internal networks or any of the other geek things we all have at home. Right?
Tell me you want to explain to your grandma how she has to set up DHCP on this shiny new router connected to a lame-ass PPPoE consumer-grade DSL line so that she can get her TiVo working.
Tell me that the average consumer knows the difference between a Cat-5 connector and a phone jack.
Security is also a factor. If the box was on the net 24/7, someone could conceivably hack info about your viewing habits. For example.
_Deirdre (engineer at TiVo, but speaking for herself)
There's more subtle things about the TiVo service that people don't necessarily know.
TiVo is random access. Those with VCRs are somewhat inured to the fact that they have to fast forward and rewind. With a TiVo, you have immediate access to the start of a show. Any show. You can delete them in any order.
What if the same episode is shown twice in one week? TiVo knows (having tagged each episode as unique) and records one. We see this with Xena all the time (now that we have TiVo, Rick is watching Xena again).
What if the show moves? On a VCR, you'd have to reprogram it. TiVo will still record the show (but there may be conflicts if you wanted to record two shows at once). Note that last-minute moves it won't know about, but if it's a scheduled move, it will.
For years, I wanted interactive television listings while surfing. Even when I had Primestar, I didn't have that. TiVo gives me that, even on an antenna-only connection.
Actually, I believe Cobalt shipped their translucent Qube long before Apple shipped their iMac. The first I remember hearing about someone having seen a Qube in person was in May 1998. The iMac didn't ship until August of that year.
Honestly, there's some really shitty people out there; I got to see a lot of them as a Comptroller. My favorite scam was the "rich person using disputing charges as a cash flow management technique." Which I saw numerous people do. My personal favorite incident was the guy who flew his family to Switzerland on his American Express. First class, about $20k bucks. Had a grand time. Got home, disputed the charges. So the travel agency (of which I was the Comptroller) gets out not only their 10% commission (or whatever it was on that particular flight, I've forgotten), but the 90% they paid to the airline. For eight months. I just wish businesses had the ability to prosecute people like that. Do losers like that REALLY think the airline didn't record their passports? But no, he had a legal right to contest it BUT THERE WAS NO PENALTY FOR LYING. I think another poster has it right: probably most of this "fraud" wasn't fraud at all. _Deirdre
One problem with selling support for OSS is that a small company of 30-or-so hackers with little or no management/marketing overhead can offer a better level of support than a big corporation, at least locally.
Actually, you've kind of hit the nail on the head. I've mentioned this to several reporters who've called.
Hint: name FIVE large, publically traded, software-services-only companies. Now, name FIVE large, publically traded software publishers. Name FIVE large, publically traded computer hardware vendors. Why do you think it's harder to find examples in the first category?
The issue, though, is that there's a fundamental economic issue: it's relatively easy to get a group of skilled Linux people to do support, at least on a small scale. With easy entry and exit from the market, there's no real barrier to competition. Thus, in this industry, the tendency toward profit is ZERO. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's OSS.
I don't care what ESR says, he obviously skipped first semester microeconomics.
Having been the financial manager of a business in another industry with similar competition constraints, I can say that cost management is quite critical. Linuxcare didn't get this. They still don't.
I worked at e*trade (in technology) almost the entire time that Nassaur was there. Nassaur, didn't have much to do with e*trade's architecture. That whole site was completed before he was actually hired. He was also in Atlanta, and almost all of the architecture, technology decisions were made in palo alto.
Of course not. It was really obvious from the S-1 filings that Nassaur was a train wreck. Senior management usually lasts in a company longer than a year.
Also, E*Trade had been a viable company with substantial infrastructure before he arrived.
Remember, he was hired for an air of legitimacy, not for any actual skill.::rolls eyes::
The article provided good insight into the consequences of internal infighting among suits, the discord caused when management pretends its job is to rule its employees rather than facilitate their work as revenue generators, and the damage that can be done when a company spends money it doesn't have and may never get.
To cover your title a bit, yes. In part, the "lack of focus" problem is inherent in open source development: each developer has a vector and the sum of those vectors may not be useful to a company. So, we have a whole bunch of people used to "doing their own thing." How does one harness that without destroying what works about it? It's easier when there's an extant company and it builds slowly.
I will say that Linuxcare had MUCH heavier-handed management than I've seen elsewhere. There was an attitude that people with bad morale will be fired. Not exactly the best way to foster high morale.
"Company cultures are mysterious, how they're born, how they evolve, how they can or can't be changed once they've become a liability. Something to fear, something to admire."
"Let me add that we have no HR department and don't plan to have one. We believe management should manage without interference or excuse."
"Another aspect of our work environment is that we're cheap. In some companies, the thought police would advise me to say 'spartan,' but once you see the pair of 8-foot couches I bought for $10 in the summer of 1991, when we set up our first office in San Jose, you'll probably agree that cheap is the word."
"Don't ask me 'When is our IPO?' My office overlooks the parking lot, and when I see the BMWs of investment bankers fighting for spaces, I'll know it's time." (Be has since IPOed)
And, given the amount Linuxcare spent in its second round, I found this quote especially applicable:
"After more than six years, we spent less than $20 million. I know a number of companies that feel there's nothing you can do with $20 million."
I did a major rewrite, in 1993, of this exact kind of system for Northern Telecom. The Product Portfolio group (the group I was in) did this initially in 1992 or perhaps even 1991. We had a series of Macintosh applications that were front ends to Oracle databases. When you logged in, it would check and see what updates were available and download them (the rewrite I did was to add the functions to selectively download, so people who didn't need to upgrade then didn't have to).
It was even smart enough to be able to replace the currently-running application cleanly.
The only distinction is the datestamp and the "registry key" -- not really innovations. We used version numbering (gosh, how standard) and an application code name to determine whether or not an application was current. Even at that time, it was all done over the internet.
I'd be willing to be a part of any patent challenge on this, as the patent is ridiculous.
Yesterday, I helped try and get local Linux companies to SVLUG and tried to get the ex-Linuxcare staff that I knew there, in hopes that this will help make the "downtime" as short a process as possible.
One of my Linuxcare friends had a job interview this morning that I helped set up. If you're one of the LC people looking, I now have even more contacts. Feel free to email me at deirdre@deirdre.net and I'll pass along what I know.
While the prognosis for everyone there is good, the early birds will have more choices.
If you're one of the ex-Linuxcare staff, I'm also asking the companies to show up at the next BALUG meeting as well. And, if you're a company that I missed somehow, just show up.:)
I am of course reminded of the movie Gattica. A rather grim 1984ish prediction of the future, done Hollywood-style. Still it was a good movie, and raised some interesting points.
Gattaca, the name was taken from the initials used for the base pairs of DNA.
The problem with the hypothesized Gattacan universe is that just because you have a gene doesn't mean it'll be expressed. For example, I have celiac disease, which is genetic. Of the studies done, one involved identical twins, where it was found that where one twin expressed the disease, there was a 70% chance the other did.
Another study (I've been looking for it again) was on Type I diabetes. Basically, the study demonstrated that if one a) had the gene, b) was given cow's milk prior to 9 months of age, and c) had the third bout of influenza prior to puberty, the gene would be expressed.
Thus, I believe we'll develop rulesets, given a person's genes, of how NOT to express undesirable traits.
Thus, I see the future not in eugenics (as Gattaca would have us believe) but rather in providing information on working around genetic issues. To me, that is a far more plausible (and pleasant, if somewhat regimented) future.
If 99.9% of all europeans call one of them an ancestor it wouldn't surprise me if something like 90% were in fact descended from all of them. Just a little bit of interbreeding should insure this.
You miss the point. Let's say that all of Europe descended from 26 women, not 7. What the finding of 7 (in the sample he's tested, which is not definitive) different types of mitochondria simply means that 7 were dominant and the existence of the other 19 (whose genes you may in fact share more of) cannot be confirmed by this methodology.
In other words, that "stamp" identifies the *dominant* traits you have from one person, where the dominant trait in question is just the one. You may have parts from other moms of Europe, just not ones that are uniquely identifiable by his methodology.
For the record, Token-Ring runs just fine on PCI, thank you very much.
For a long time, the drivers for PCI Token Ring were NOT there, especially for Linux. In fact, when I was looking for Token Ring drivers (two years ago), the PCI cards were notably Not Supported. Furthermore, they weren't even well supported on other OSes at the time. I finally used a Linux box with an ISA Token Ring card to use as a router for my laptop (running Ethernet).
Let's not forgot that USB was designed to replace your serial ports, not the ISA bus.
Keyboards and mice shouldn't be hung off of ISA. USB is a more-than-acceptable way of doing it and offers advantages of doing MORE than just mouse, keyboard and game port (!).
USB networking, for example, has roughly 60% the throughput of a even a cheesy $5 ISA card.
This isn't even relevant to the point as networking is done on this board through PCI (which is the most appropriate solution).
Some good news show come really soon now from IBM and it's pop architecture. PowerPC might be the firts open platform : see openppc.org for more details.
While open hardware specs are a Good Thing (tm), openppc's mobo design is NOT. Please turn to page 24 on their PDF file of the mobo design.
Can we declare ISA dead once and for all? I mean, I know this is IBM and Token Ring really only runs well on ISA, but can we have a MODERN motherboard designed in this decade please?
How about USB for keyboard and mouse rather than the dated, lame, ISA?
Two IDE controllers? How retro.
This is nothing more than a stock x86 design (and all its legacy cruft) with a spot for a PowerPC chip.
If BeOS actually cared about PPC Mac users, they'd hire people to do the same hard work that they LinuxPPC team is doing.
The verbal abuse in this statement aside, there are a lot of Mac people at Be. The reality is that Be supports its OS and it won't support something it doesn't have specs to. That seems pretty cut and dried, not to mention a reasonable position.
Besides, why are you slamming the efforts of a group that has done something you consider far too difficult for Be, Inc.?
Too difficult?::chortle:: Not. There's a big difference between being able to do something and being able to *support* something.
What's so wrong with giving Mac and other PPC users a chance at Linux without having to give up their current machine or get an extra one?
This seems something to slam Apple for, not Be. I have run MacOS (various flavors), LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, MkLinux, MacOS X Server and BeOS on various Macs over the last few years.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716 ,121640,00.html
_Deirdre
Actually, at a MacWorld one year (1995?), IBM was showing Windows NT running on an IBM CHRP-based PowerPC system.
The project was axed.
_Deirdre
That makes the forking, what, 2 1/2 years old?
Yeah, it re-integrates from time to time, but the official kernel tree hasn't been the place to get a *usable* PowerPC kernel in like forever.
PS - don't get me started on support for weird PowerPC chipsets. Just don't.
_Deirdre
I've had two issues with it:
1) Connecting from an old Mac to the X box using FileSharing over TCP/IP caused the Mach kernel's AFP layer to harf. To get the service going again, I had to restart (kernel services being a bummer that way). This was a known limitation; I just didn't know it.
2) There was some issue where it wouldn't create additional terminal windows and, when pushed, it eventually wound up with a kernel panic. I sent in the backtrace. This was apparently also a known problem with some kind of memory leak.
Minor stuff really, not problems I'd have in everyday use.
But for using, hard, a beta OS for a couple months, not a bad track record. It will replace Linux as my home desktop OS (already has for the most part); it has more creature comforts to offer and, with open source under the hood, little of the prior MacOS's disadvantages.
_Deirdre
Early rumors suggested the layoff would be approximately 15-20 people, but I haven't heard any specifics.
_Deirdre
That they expected business to materialize that would cover the cost of the salaries of the people and it didn't happen that way.
It's not a personal thing. It's not the demise of Linux. Linux existed before any Linux-related companies. If they all died off today, Linux would still grow, albeit a bit more slowly.
No one knows the future; companies have to make guesses about future business and how to prepare for it and those guesses may be wrong.
Consider the alternative many of these companies faced: at the time, putting Linux on your resume in Silicon Valley virtually guaranteed a job. What would happen if they *hadn't* expanded and the business came rolling in? They'd have found they couln't deliver the service and they couldn't hire it at a price where they could make a profit. So they went with the plan of hiring the talent early, which sounds prudent to me.
There's also the part that no one really wants to admit: a good part of the increase in demand for Linux was the dot com boom. The side effect to this is that the market for Linux services was largely in the dot com sector, the exact sector that Linuxcare wasn't trying to go after in the first place. Everyone (with any sense) knew that bubble would burst, they just didn't know when. Well, I think the dot com craze can now be officially declared as dead as disco.
The reality is that the dot com sag hit every Linux company hard. It also hit a lot of other sectors of the economy hard.
After all, people in those companies that didn't IPO won't be buying those fully-loaded limited edition PT Cruisers, now will they?
C'mon guys, no one's saying that it's the end of *cars* because DaimlerChrysler is laying off more people than there are in the entire Linux sector.
All it means is that the Linux bubble is over. This is a good thing.
_Deirdre
And, when MacOS X comes out, you can have the warm fuzzies associated with knowing that, even though you're running on a proprietary GUI layer, you are running an open source OS underneath.
_Deirdre
Let's not make the same linguistic mistake we despise when the average reporter gets it wrong.
[ObDisclaimer: my employer has business relationships with DirecTV, but I do not speak for them]
I know why Ebay lists all bidders: so that you can see that the seller themself is not inflating the bid price. Given that you want the buyer to know this, how would you accomodate that need for information and balance it against the privacy you suggest?
I've had a LOT of good transactions over Ebay and may have had the first fraudulent one (after several hundred positives) a couple of weeks ago.
Over a two-hour period, a new Ebay seller (who was subsequently yanked from Ebay) sold $56,000 worth of stuff in 60-odd auctions. Some of the people sent money right away via Paypal. Others of us took a wait-and-see attitude. So far, I haven't heard of any one of these people actually receiving the goods.
At least one person's filed a fraud claim.
_Deirdre
Cost is a big factor. Broadband isn't even available in most households. Thus, putting in ethernet where it would benefit relatively few people would make it cost more for everyone else. In a price-sensitive market, this would be a Bad Thing.
Even if a person does have broadband, not everyone is set up to have either multiple IPs or a router and private IPs to internal networks or any of the other geek things we all have at home. Right?
Tell me you want to explain to your grandma how she has to set up DHCP on this shiny new router connected to a lame-ass PPPoE consumer-grade DSL line so that she can get her TiVo working.
Tell me that the average consumer knows the difference between a Cat-5 connector and a phone jack.
Security is also a factor. If the box was on the net 24/7, someone could conceivably hack info about your viewing habits. For example.
_Deirdre (engineer at TiVo, but speaking for herself)
There's more subtle things about the TiVo service that people don't necessarily know.
TiVo is random access. Those with VCRs are somewhat inured to the fact that they have to fast forward and rewind. With a TiVo, you have immediate access to the start of a show. Any show. You can delete them in any order.
What if the same episode is shown twice in one week? TiVo knows (having tagged each episode as unique) and records one. We see this with Xena all the time (now that we have TiVo, Rick is watching Xena again).
What if the show moves? On a VCR, you'd have to reprogram it. TiVo will still record the show (but there may be conflicts if you wanted to record two shows at once). Note that last-minute moves it won't know about, but if it's a scheduled move, it will.
For years, I wanted interactive television listings while surfing. Even when I had Primestar, I didn't have that. TiVo gives me that, even on an antenna-only connection.
ObDisclaimer: I work for TiVo.
_Deirdre
Actually, I believe Cobalt shipped their translucent Qube long before Apple shipped their iMac. The first I remember hearing about someone having seen a Qube in person was in May 1998. The iMac didn't ship until August of that year.
_Deirdre
Honestly, there's some really shitty people out there; I got to see a lot of them as a Comptroller. My favorite scam was the "rich person using disputing charges as a cash flow management technique." Which I saw numerous people do. My personal favorite incident was the guy who flew his family to Switzerland on his American Express. First class, about $20k bucks. Had a grand time. Got home, disputed the charges. So the travel agency (of which I was the Comptroller) gets out not only their 10% commission (or whatever it was on that particular flight, I've forgotten), but the 90% they paid to the airline. For eight months. I just wish businesses had the ability to prosecute people like that. Do losers like that REALLY think the airline didn't record their passports? But no, he had a legal right to contest it BUT THERE WAS NO PENALTY FOR LYING. I think another poster has it right: probably most of this "fraud" wasn't fraud at all. _Deirdre
http://gtk-mac.sourceforge.net/
Really soon. This will make Gtk cross-platform on everything that counts. :)
_Deirdre
Hint: name FIVE large, publically traded, software-services-only companies. Now, name FIVE large, publically traded software publishers. Name FIVE large, publically traded computer hardware vendors. Why do you think it's harder to find examples in the first category?
The issue, though, is that there's a fundamental economic issue: it's relatively easy to get a group of skilled Linux people to do support, at least on a small scale. With easy entry and exit from the market, there's no real barrier to competition. Thus, in this industry, the tendency toward profit is ZERO. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's OSS.
I don't care what ESR says, he obviously skipped first semester microeconomics.
Having been the financial manager of a business in another industry with similar competition constraints, I can say that cost management is quite critical. Linuxcare didn't get this. They still don't.
_Deirdre
Also, E*Trade had been a viable company with substantial infrastructure before he arrived.
Remember, he was hired for an air of legitimacy, not for any actual skill. ::rolls eyes::
_Deirdre
I will say that Linuxcare had MUCH heavier-handed management than I've seen elsewhere. There was an attitude that people with bad morale will be fired. Not exactly the best way to foster high morale.
The more I learn about Jean-Louis Gassee, the more I think he had things right. A few quotes from "The Quotable JLG":
And, given the amount Linuxcare spent in its second round, I found this quote especially applicable:
_Deirdre
It was even smart enough to be able to replace the currently-running application cleanly.
The only distinction is the datestamp and the "registry key" -- not really innovations. We used version numbering (gosh, how standard) and an application code name to determine whether or not an application was current. Even at that time, it was all done over the internet.
I'd be willing to be a part of any patent challenge on this, as the patent is ridiculous.
Once again, no more "I" for Microsoft.
_Deirdre
One of my Linuxcare friends had a job interview this morning that I helped set up. If you're one of the LC people looking, I now have even more contacts. Feel free to email me at deirdre@deirdre.net and I'll pass along what I know.
While the prognosis for everyone there is good, the early birds will have more choices.
If you're one of the ex-Linuxcare staff, I'm also asking the companies to show up at the next BALUG meeting as well. And, if you're a company that I missed somehow, just show up. :)
_Deirdre
Gattaca, the name was taken from the initials used for the base pairs of DNA.
The problem with the hypothesized Gattacan universe is that just because you have a gene doesn't mean it'll be expressed. For example, I have celiac disease, which is genetic. Of the studies done, one involved identical twins, where it was found that where one twin expressed the disease, there was a 70% chance the other did.
Another study (I've been looking for it again) was on Type I diabetes. Basically, the study demonstrated that if one a) had the gene, b) was given cow's milk prior to 9 months of age, and c) had the third bout of influenza prior to puberty, the gene would be expressed.
Thus, I believe we'll develop rulesets, given a person's genes, of how NOT to express undesirable traits.
Thus, I see the future not in eugenics (as Gattaca would have us believe) but rather in providing information on working around genetic issues. To me, that is a far more plausible (and pleasant, if somewhat regimented) future.
_Deirdre
You miss the point. Let's say that all of Europe descended from 26 women, not 7. What the finding of 7 (in the sample he's tested, which is not definitive) different types of mitochondria simply means that 7 were dominant and the existence of the other 19 (whose genes you may in fact share more of) cannot be confirmed by this methodology.
In other words, that "stamp" identifies the *dominant* traits you have from one person, where the dominant trait in question is just the one. You may have parts from other moms of Europe, just not ones that are uniquely identifiable by his methodology.
_Deirdre
For a long time, the drivers for PCI Token Ring were NOT there, especially for Linux. In fact, when I was looking for Token Ring drivers (two years ago), the PCI cards were notably Not Supported. Furthermore, they weren't even well supported on other OSes at the time. I finally used a Linux box with an ISA Token Ring card to use as a router for my laptop (running Ethernet).
Let's not forgot that USB was designed to replace your serial ports, not the ISA bus.
Keyboards and mice shouldn't be hung off of ISA. USB is a more-than-acceptable way of doing it and offers advantages of doing MORE than just mouse, keyboard and game port (!).
USB networking, for example, has roughly 60% the throughput of a even a cheesy $5 ISA card.
This isn't even relevant to the point as networking is done on this board through PCI (which is the most appropriate solution).
_Deirdre
While open hardware specs are a Good Thing (tm), openppc's mobo design is NOT. Please turn to page 24 on their PDF file of the mobo design.
Can we declare ISA dead once and for all? I mean, I know this is IBM and Token Ring really only runs well on ISA, but can we have a MODERN motherboard designed in this decade please?
How about USB for keyboard and mouse rather than the dated, lame, ISA?
Two IDE controllers? How retro.
This is nothing more than a stock x86 design (and all its legacy cruft) with a spot for a PowerPC chip.
I mean, the thing even has a game port.
_Deirdre
The verbal abuse in this statement aside, there are a lot of Mac people at Be. The reality is that Be supports its OS and it won't support something it doesn't have specs to. That seems pretty cut and dried, not to mention a reasonable position.
Besides, why are you slamming the efforts of a group that has done something you consider far too difficult for Be, Inc.?
Too difficult? ::chortle:: Not. There's a big difference between being able to do something and being able to *support* something.
What's so wrong with giving Mac and other PPC users a chance at Linux without having to give up their current machine or get an extra one?
This seems something to slam Apple for, not Be. I have run MacOS (various flavors), LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, MkLinux, MacOS X Server and BeOS on various Macs over the last few years.
_Deirdre (who does not speak for Be or Apple)