[9fans] Re: PC capability

[forsyth@vitanuova.com forsyth@vitanuova.com]

it no doubt depends on which workstations and PCs we've experienced.

for instance, i would never choose SCSI as an example, because from the earliest
days of my experiences with 386 PCs and above, the SCSI adapters i was able to use
-- even ISA ones -- were fairly cheap, better documented, easier to handle
(ie did more, and that sensibly), and much faster than the SCSI
interfaces on equivalent Sun-3s and Sparcs, and even MIPS, that cost much more.

IDE hasn't been that primitive for years.  indeed, probably the main complaint
i'd make about PCs is that things sometimes change so often in various ways
(ether, graphics, etc) that it's hard to keep up.   mind you, that was true
in different ways with Sun and SGI.

indeed, the most useful non-Intel platform i've used was the BeBox,
because although it was PowerPC, it had ISA and PCI slots
(and a useful NCR scsi chip) just like .... errr ... a PC.  it was
dual-processor, though, long before the normal PC (but no secondary cache).