Re: [9fans] General question about hosted interfaces

[geoff@collyer.net]

Doug asks how much of the 26,300-line difference in .c files
between the PC and the Bitsy is due to the Bitsy having had
less time to evolve.

The Bitsy family could well sprout new gadgets over time,
but it's somewhat physically constrained by its size and
I hope that Compaq will have the good sense to keep using
the same components unless it has really good reason
(not just the price on the spot market for components this
morning).  Meanwhile, in the wild chaos of the PC I count
12,181 lines of pc/ether*.c in 14 files for roughly that
many different kinds of Ethernet cards, and 6,583 lines
of pc/vga*.c in 21 files, again for roughly that many kinds
of VGA cards.  So 18,764 lines of the difference (all but
roughly 7,500 lines [my earlier line counts were rounded])
are accounted for by the lack of interface standards and
the needless complexity and pointless diversity of many of
those interfaces.  And there are lots of other incompatible
devices available.  I give jmk a lot of credit for keeping
those line counts as low as they are.

I know, let's make a version of Plan 9 that runs on Mach;
that'll solve all our problems!  ☺