Author: Johan Klockars (as28-3-8.va.g.bonet.se)
Date: 06-14-2003 00:07
> PC architecture is same old that in first 8086...
The programming model changed a _lot_ with the 386.
> there is no memorymapped-io,
Of course there is memory mapped I/O. That not all hardware uses it is mostly a matter of legacy support and convenience.
> no DSP-chip
Most reasonably good soundcards have DSPs in some form.
> no graphics in memory,
Thank God!
(Some chipset built-in graphics hardware does have that, though.)
> no sprites...
Just about every graphics card has a sprite for the mouse pointer.
For more generic sprites you'll have to look at some games consoles and their relatives (the Amiga and some old home computers).
> there is not anything new nice architecture.
What would you classify as new and nice?
Except for _really_ high-end stuff (and really low-end), nearly everyone in the industry is using PCI in some form.
I think PCI Express is going to be great, and might finally get rid of the special purpose AGP bus.
> Do you ever used the very powerfull commandline of Linux...
You can use exactly the same command line interpreters under Windows if you want.
> and how easy build your own kernel...
Hopefully, not many people will have reason to do that, though. ;-)
> They always say that PC parts are so cheap, but I still wait when you can buy new usefull homecomputer at price 150euros/dollars like I buy at 1985...
A couple of months ago you could buy fully useable PC's for $200 at various places in the US (Walmart etc, IIRC). They are probably still available.
That included something like 1 GHz CPU, at least 64 Mbyte RAM, 20 Gbyte HD and CDROM, IIRC.
> it was normal price for Spectaravideo SVI-728MSX
Remember that $150 was significantly more money in '85 than $200 is today.
> (and it have sprites...and you cannot even buy PC these days that have sprites).
If any of the graphics card companies thought that implementing sprites would help their sales, they would.
What do you want sprites for, anyway?
> but hey, if we have all ports that we need, so we don't need PCI.
You can _never_ have all the ports that everyone would need.
Anyway, why worry about PCI? There are lots of CPU's available these days with it built-in, and for the rest it's in the chipset you need to access your RAM, anyway.
(Yes, you can do your memory controller in an FPGA or CPLD, but if you want some decent speed it probably won't be cheaper.)
> Actually 1GB-ethernet don't cost very much if it's designed to motherboard.
You'd probably need a PCI bus to connect the chip, though. Or find a chipset with one built-in, but then you'd likely get PCI too.
;-)
|
