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

[Douglas A. Gwyn DAGwyn@null.net]

presotto@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> Win LT modems are finding their way into most notebooks and
> laptops that I'm interested in buying.  ...
> Hopefully, I'll find the time before the release,
> especially since my favorite IBM laptop has a Win LT modem.

Good luck, but also I think we should be complaining to the
notebook makers that we don't appreciate them on-loading
(opposite of off-loading) such processing onto the CPU.
Throughout the history of computing, we learned to go in
the opposite direction (communication processor frint ends).
This is especially important now that modems are using
sophisticated ECC and modulation techniques -- sure, a lot
of it can be done by the CPU, if necessary, but that's not
what the CPU is best used for.  It's also simply not good
design to introduce so much unnecessary functional coupling.