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Grex > Coop12 > #94: Minutes March 21, 2002 Board Meeting | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 136 responses total. |
keesan
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response 52 of 136:
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Apr 15 12:32 UTC 2002 |
Has anyone yet found the time to work on the faster modem bank, or at least
to do something about the flaky modem at 761-3000? (Switch it with one at the
end of the queue).
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cross
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response 53 of 136:
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Apr 15 16:18 UTC 2002 |
Regarding #50; No, this is an engineering descision, not something based
on someone's personal preference. All the evidence so far suggests that
OpenBSD on AMD x86 hardware is the appropriate choice, not OpenBSD on
UltraSPARC. Even Marcus' own recent statements in the garage group echo
that sentiment. Perhaps you'd care to spend some time reading through the
garage group to see where things stand?
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mdw
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response 54 of 136:
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Apr 16 01:01 UTC 2002 |
That's cross's interpretation of what I said, not my sentiments.
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russ
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response 55 of 136:
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Apr 16 04:03 UTC 2002 |
Speaking of faster modems, I've only identified one of the seven
Grex modems which reliably runs sz at anything close to the speed
you'd expect from a 14,400 BPS data rate. Most of them run at less
than half that, yet all the modems are supposed to be the same.
Seems pointless to upgrade the modems when the other problems go
un-addressed.
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cross
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response 56 of 136:
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Apr 16 16:07 UTC 2002 |
Regarding #54; I quote from your most recent statements on the matter
in the garage group:
As things stand, I'd say that sparc64 openbsd is certainly
stable enough to get real work done, and likely stable enough to
run in production for a non-demanding job and accumulate 100+
day uptimes. There are some performance issues that might be
needed for a sufficiently demanding job, as well as perhaps
other unknowns. There are certainly still issues that need to
be solved before grex could use this for the main login machine,
with active hostile users on the "inside".
Well, perhaps it's my interpretation, but it seems pretty clear that
you're saying it's not up to snuff yet, what with the comments about
non-demanding jobs and performance problems. However, feel free to
correct me if I'm wrong and that's not what you meant.
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keesan
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response 57 of 136:
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Apr 17 00:40 UTC 2002 |
Perhaps Marcus is implying that he is presently solving the issues?
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mdw
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response 58 of 136:
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Apr 17 01:08 UTC 2002 |
No, I'm being quoted out of context. Someone asked me how I thought the
Sun port stood *today*. The actual target we care about is 6 months - 1
year ahead, including both work we do on our end, work the openbsd folks
do at their end, work the hardware makers put into their hardware, as
well as whatever changes happen in the marketplace for new & used
hardware.
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cross
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response 59 of 136:
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Apr 18 19:36 UTC 2002 |
Regarding #'s 57 and 58; I think that it would be foolish to assume
that Marcus can fix the problems. Don't take that as a slight of Marcus'
technical abilities, but rather as an indication of the size of the task.
It took the OpenBSD team something like 6 years to get the 32-bit SPARC
port to anywhere approaching production quality. It's likely it'll take
them at least several years to do the same with 64-bit SPARC; no one
individual is going to be able to ``solve'' these problems in six months
or a year.
Regarding Marcus' statement about the hardware vendors: what does that
have to do with anything? Sun isn't really helping the BSD developers.
It's going to take years to get the UltraSPARC port into production
shape. Historical precedence dictates that you should look at the shape
of the OpenBSD SPARC-64 port now as a (close) approximation of the state
of the port in 6 months.
Besides, why would you *want* to use an architecture that's obscure and
has a dubious future?
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mdw
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response 60 of 136:
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Apr 20 03:10 UTC 2002 |
You mean like i386?
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gull
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response 61 of 136:
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Apr 21 02:53 UTC 2002 |
One thing i386 has going for it is that lots of vendors produce the
stuff. That means it's cheap and it'll be plentiful for a long time.
With SPARC you're pretty much locked into buying from Sun.
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mdw
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response 62 of 136:
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Apr 22 04:20 UTC 2002 |
Er, there *are* several other sparc suppliers... And the peripheral
market should be opening up now that they're not using their own
proprietary bus.
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cross
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response 63 of 136:
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Apr 22 16:19 UTC 2002 |
Marcus, please, don't let your personal opinion cloud your judgement.
x86 may not be the nicest architecture in the world, but it's far from
obscure, and it definately has a brighter future than SPARC. Also,
while there may be more than one SPARC vendor, there's only one that
really matters, kind of like how there was more than one Alpha vendor
but only one really mattered. I'm really rather surprised that you'd
say such things.
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gull
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response 64 of 136:
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Apr 22 20:48 UTC 2002 |
Or sort of like how there was (briefly) more than one Macintosh vendor...
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styles
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response 65 of 136:
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Apr 22 22:18 UTC 2002 |
hey, man, my starmax is still (not really) chugging along.
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jp2
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response 66 of 136:
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Apr 23 00:28 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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mdw
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response 67 of 136:
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Apr 23 00:50 UTC 2002 |
Design-wise: i386 *is* obscure. It's far out of the mainstream of CPU
design, and in many respects isn't far from the IBM 7094 of the early
60's. It also has a limited future, if the ia64 architecture takes off.
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aruba
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response 68 of 136:
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Apr 23 03:18 UTC 2002 |
I think it's fair to say that there will be lots of i386 hardware available
for longer than Grex will be on the machine we're talking about moving to
now.
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gull
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response 69 of 136:
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Apr 23 14:38 UTC 2002 |
I'm coming to the realization that this debate is pointless because
platform selection is a religious issue. You're never going to convince
a member of the Cult of the Sun to consider the doctrine of the
Intelites. ;)
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gull
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response 70 of 136:
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Apr 23 14:39 UTC 2002 |
(Incidentally, a lot of people seem to be of the opinion that Intel has
blown the ia64 design. It remains to be seen, of course.)
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cross
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response 71 of 136:
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Apr 23 14:48 UTC 2002 |
No, it's not obscure. Obtuse, definately, but obscure implies uncommon,
and x86 is practically the most plentiful chip out there.
When SGI bought MIPS, Ken Thompson bemoaned the fact that i386 was going
to take over the world. Phil Winterbottom said to him, ``they won,
we lost, deal with it.'' Words to live by.
The x86 chip isn't a great design, but it's cheap, it's fast, it's
reliable, and it's extremely well supported by software. SPARC is none
of these things (well, perhaps reliable, but that doesn't matter if it's
not supported).
Of course, I suspect that grex will end up on a Sun anyway. Too bad.
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jp2
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response 72 of 136:
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Apr 23 15:48 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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cross
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response 73 of 136:
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Apr 23 16:26 UTC 2002 |
Yeah yeah yeah. I meant for end-user computer systems, as opposed to
embedded devices. btw- is Z80 really still more common than 68k?
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jp2
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response 74 of 136:
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Apr 23 16:40 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 75 of 136:
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Apr 23 20:15 UTC 2002 |
TI-8x series programmable calculators use Z-80s, too. The Nintendo
Gameboy uses a modified version of the Z-80.
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mdw
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response 76 of 136:
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Apr 23 23:01 UTC 2002 |
Obviously, i386 (and z80...) is everywhere. The *design* though is,
well, unique and uncommon. 68k has at least learned about general
register architecture from the ibm 360. Digging back through history,
well, um, an interesting parallel is the ford model T -- it was also
unique yet ubiquitous.
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