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

[Digby Tarvin digbyt@acm.org]

> //...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...

The common denominator here is that hardware manufacturers
that also sell their own operating system have no incentive
to divulge hardware details. Especially if they are counting
on software sales for the bulk of their profits.

The best bet is to buy boards from company's like Motorola,
who rely on third party OS suppliers and hence produce very
good hardware documentation.

The move towards a common bus (PCI) may help, but only if we
have at least one viable competitor to Microsoft, so that
the hardware makers will not be able to automatically assume
that writing one driver will cover 99% of the market.
Otherwise it may actually be a problem, because whereas
boards currently made for the VME bus come with good documentation
because there is no dominant operating system, is VME is
replaced by PCI, the board makers are suddenly presented
a hugely dominant OS and they may decide the commercial
imperative is to provide a driver for that rather than do
the documentation. Of all the operating system vendors, Microsoft
is the one that will not only fail to write a driver for you,
but will make you pay for the privelege of supporting their
system.

Regards,
DigbyT
--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk