Re: [9fans] ndis-ulator for plan 9

[Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>]

David Leimbach wrote:

> All of this begins to remind me why I normally don't muck around in OS
> kernels.  It's so really not fun or interesting to deal with the
> braindead-ness of hardware.

it's not all bad. USB was a trainwreck from day one. But there's 
infiniban- oh, wait, that's kind of icky too. Well, there's always 
BlueToot -- oh, wait, I'm told that makes USB look sane.

well, still, you still shouldn't give up so easily.

Ah, then, maybe chipset work? You could work with the chipsets and -- 
oh, wait, vendors won't let you see them. Hmm. Well, they're kinda ugly 
anwyay.

Well, there's the busses! Yes, the busses! check out PCI-E, which does 
ARQ in hardware! Now there's some fun -- oh, no, it's not fun at all, 
Forgive me, I forgot. And, I am told, it has just as high latency as 
PCI-X, because of all the extra glop that got added to support ARQ in 
hardware. Hmm.

Well, if you don't want to do hardware, consider the low-level software 
stuff that vendors are pushing, like EFI and ACPI, they're really pretty 
nic -- oh, wait, they're awful.

ah, hmm. Well! this is interesting. I'm putting my life into stuff that 
sucks. What am I doing here?

I shoulda gone to work for a railroad. If you get mad at something on 
the railroad, you get to hit it with a spike hammer (I learned this from 
experience). Although at times I would like to hit a computer with a 
spike hammer. Spike hammers have a nice heft to them, and would leave a 
nice round hole in most computers -- metal cases are no problem.

Or maybe be a window washer! ".... a window washer me ..."

ron