Hi all !

Ric wrote :

> There is a way to have your MPE and eat it too.
>
> Write it from scratch!  Duplicate the functionally of the OS and all
> commands.  Make it completely open and cross platform.  Go
> for it.  I'll
> watch.

That's a highly respectable idea. AFAIK, AMD processors were designed in a
similar way, by reverse-engineering Intel chips. Well, so much for the
theory. But we have to keep in mind that we're talking about an 18-million
line baby, so I'm not exactly sure of the real feasability.

>  Lots of work, and since I have seen some of the FOS
> source code, I
> don't qualify.

I've seen LOTS of MPE source code, both for FOS and for a few products as
well (e.g. TurboStore). One does not have to be impressed by the fact it's
"system" code. It's just comparable to app code. It greatly varies in
readability, maintainability, embedded comments, etc. There are a few tricks
here and there, but nothing in the divine realm. All of this is within human
understanding.

> Precedent:  The IBM BIOS wars for the PC.  They were able to
> sell their own
> BIOS (was it AMI) because the new BIOS was written from scratch by
> person(s) having NO knowledge of the IBM BIOS source code.
> Therefore it
> was an original work.
>
> Yes, this is a dumb idea.  But people smarter than I, take
> dumb ideas and
> somehow make a brilliant ones.  Good luck whoever you are.

Oh well, many inventions that are now taken for granted were born out of
ideas that seemed plain dumb at the time. Want examples ? Penicillin, the
atom bomb, the Apple computer, GUIs ... Want more ?

Christian "If I could only get a dumb idea of my own !" Lheureux

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *