From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 08:51:10 +0000 From: Douglas A. Gwyn DAGwyn@null.net Subject: [9fans] hardware documentation (was Plan 9 future) Topicbox-Message-UUID: adf20840-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Message-ID: <20000515085110.2xDquvq9brPOf-EkH_n8bdrmtBNqQgpSejj36g3rHVY@z> 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.