Stan Sieler ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
 
[snip]
 
: Remember...HP sells many more 700s than 800s ... and it shows in the
: prices ... you can get a high-performance 700 for *much*less than
: an equivalent performance 800.
 
: The right answer is:
 
:    We've been saying for years that the low-level drivers on both operating
:    systems share a lot of code ... so we'd be glad to put MPE on the 700
:    hardware...where it *belongs*, and where users have been asking for it
:    for more than 3 years.
 
 
: > have to leverage an existing box. It would be a huge investment for a very
: > small payback. I don't think the cost of the development platform is an
 
: If the drivers aren't shared (sorry, I can't comment on what I do/don't know
: about this), then they *should* be shared, preferably in a manner that
: allows future HP-UX driver work for possible future machines to be
: immediately used by MPE/iX.  Having two groups developing drivers for the
: same hardware is, well, a waste of very valuable resources.
 
Unfortunately there are several I/O systems that work with PA-RISC.  MPE
only addresses a few of them.
 
As you know Stan, HPE and HP-UX had the same I/O architecture and the
drivers were interchangable; but as time went on, MPE and HP-UX modified
the interfaces.  A couple years ago HP-UX abandoned the common I/O
architecture for a more standard UNIX one.  This was to allow 3rd party
developers to write drivers.  The cost to HP-UX was large.  MPE did not
want to incur that cost.  As you know MPE drivers are port based, while
the UNIX drivers are procedure based.  I have always been sadden at the
the fact that the HP-UX and the MPE drivers were not common after alot
of people developed a common I/O architecture.  In the early days, the
basic difference was that HP-UX did not want all the diagnostics that
MPE had in the drivers.  Now they do.  But you know how history sets the
tone for the future.
 
Rick "don't use [log in to unmask]" Ehrhart
[log in to unmask]