[9fans] hardware documentation (was Plan 9 future)

[Anthony Sorace anothy@eden.rutgers.edu]

//...the same factors should be making makers of other boxes
//based on non x86 architectures that much more helpful.

it "should", yes. unfortunatly, this doesn't seem to be the
case. Apple and Sun, the only two i know anything about, are
both as dificult as ever. Apple more so, actually, now that
they've basically killed off the clone market. Be, for
example, a company who makes another OS (creativly named the
BeOS) originally wrote their product for PowerPC (first for
custom hardware, then a port to most popular Macs). they've
ported to the x86, and are unable to produce a version of
their OS for the G3 or G4 Macs because Apple won't tell Be
anything about the hardware.

i hear/read that similar things are true of SGI. luckily, the
introduction of PCI into Sun boxes is making this a little
less of a problem. also, with Sun releasing source to their
OS, this problem could be made much less of an issue for Sun
boxes. i'd love to be able to put Plan 9 on my Ultra 5...
: anothy;