RE: /FREE the Palatine One!

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Which would be me, of course...

Anyway, just to interject a bit of perspective to this conversation.  I'd
forgotten how lucky we are that it's actually a big deal whether or not DIV
and %DIV execute the same.

I just spent an hour on the phone with a person who shall remain nameless as
we ripped apart the Internet figuring out the latest state of two PC
standards: the PCI bus and the SCSI protocol.

These are not some arcane or bleeding edge things, like wireless connections
or cell phone communications or even XML standards.  This is basic stuff...
PCI specifies the physical configuration of PC slots that you stick the
cards in, while SCSI determines the protocol with which one category of
cards (namely SCSI controllers) talks to the physical devices.  And not
exotic devices, mind you.  We're talking basic disk and tape drives.

Remember back in the day when there were PC/XT and PC/AT standards?  If
only...

Evidently, the industry has become all but deregulated with new "standards"
coming out so fast that a device that works in a machine you bought
yesterday may not work in a machine you buy today.

There are at last count no less than five different PCI standards (many of
which are completely incompatible) and six different SCSI standards (all of
which are incompatible).  Not only that, the names have been changed to
protect the guilty - SCSI-2 is NOT the same as Ultra2 SCSI.  No, no, no.
Ultra2 SCSI is actually a sub-category of SCSI-3, and is faster that Ultra.
Then there's Ultra160, which is NOT 80x as fast as Ultra2, but instead is
somewhere between Ultra and Ultra2.

And don't get me started on the PCI types.  They've gone and changed the
VOLTAGE on the cards.  The old days of +/-5V?  Move over, old dog.  The 3.3V
dog is movin' in.  Agh.

By the way, if anybody notices something wrong in one of my statements (like
maybe Ultra2 is not as fast as Ultra160, or a SCSI-1 drive can work on a
SCSI-2 controller), feel free to... KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.  Because frankly, I
don't care.

This is why I don't do hardware.  If I gotta add a little /end-free and
/free around an old MOVE instruction, that's nothing compared to what's
going on in the hardware world.

Ugh.

Joe