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PCI phased out? (Announce)

posted by marcov, 11.02.2011, 10:56
(edited by marcov on 11.02.2011, 11:10)

> > No, since I did the smart thing and junked that kind of kit long ago.
> Sure,
> > if it is your NMR, you might have no choice, but you are not very likely
> to
> > run new software on your NMR.
>
> 3 years ago I assisted with building a new PC for a dentist who needed to
> run his digital x-ray machine that used some special ISA adapter. I also
> have a friend in FCC PS which sells industrial PCs and ISA is still
> sometimes used. And PCI a very lot. It's not fun comlpetly remake some old
> but well running industrial systems. Many people may call me a conservative
> but I have respect to that well designed and long time running machines...
I know all about it. But staying to conservative too long is not healthy either. The big gaps in technology then kill you. Throwing some money at it to keep old stuff running can then be the easy way, but is not always the smartest.

> > I can lookup exact type tomorrow, but it has the flawed *6* series
> chip,
> > so might be hard to get (we ordered just before the recall)
>
> OK, let me know. I was talking about this one:
>
> GIGABYTE
> P55-UD3L
> [image]
> This is one and only in the shop offer
Gigabyte H67M-D2 (for socket LGA1155, the new Sandy Bridge CPUs) has two COM sockets. It also has PS/2.

> > No. I never actually got serial/usb connectors to run reliably long
> term.
>
> I use some with FTDI232 and Prolific PL2302. Single seems to work usable
> but when we measured various GPS receivers connected to USB HUB it was
> relly pain. We do outdoor test so it was connected to notebook where was
> not any real serial and no choice for expansion
The driver that I said was prolific iirc.

> > Luckily PCI (or PCIex) versions of com cards are relatively cheap. (I
> > actually bought 6 for Eur 15 together a while back)
>
> Yes that's cheap. We bougt combo 2xCOM + 1xLPT PCI-E 1x at work for about
> 500 CZK ~ 20euro. It works fine under win/linux. But it uses exotic IO base
> so DOS programs cannot find them and coz of PnP I cannot force them to
> usual low address. But I don't need it at work only at home.
>
> > I have hit the 3/4 primary partition limit often enough.
>
> And you really need to make them primary?
Yes.

> Cannot be in extended?

Not always, and when even when it should work in theory, it doesn't always work. (because of "smart" auto-partitioning programs)

> multiple OSes dos/win/linux and have enough 3 primary + 1 extended...
How do you boot a dos partition in the extended partition? Windows is even worse. While old NT4 had a way to have a separate bootmgr, afaik this doesn't exist anymore (and if it does, it eats an extra paritition).

And the bootmgr now is part of HD0, active partition, period.

> Hmm, then why you're loosing time on DOS forum with oldskool fanatics
> rather than polishing your 64bit super hyper modern bloatware windows/linux
> :-D

I sometimes wonder too :-) But I'm mainly here because of interest in fullscreen textmode apps. Something that is simply more happening on Dos, but works absolutely fine on 64bit super hyper modern bloatware windows/linux/BSD/OSX

> > Nobody cares for accelerating it anymore. It is only used for GUIs
> during
> > OS install, and after people go to native emulation. For that
>
> But it's not about any HW acceleration. VESA LFB is just a piece gfx memory
> mapped into CPU address space. So why it's now 100x slower? New PCI-E bus
> allows transfer GB/s but someone crippled that.
Because it is not properly initialized, and nobody cares since the onesit is only used for the minimal stuff

Search for Coreboot (the open source bios, with wonderful functionality as minimal OSes in the BIOS), they IIRC have a nice writeup over what happens when the PC boots.

> > "compatibility" situation it doesn't have to be fast. The Linux fora are
> > full of thread how to get rid of "generic vesa", and move to native
> > ATI/NVIDIA/Intel drivers as quick as possible
>
> Yes linux VESA framebuffer is also affected. You can replace it with
> something called a "driver" (nouveau) but then it will not be universal.
But universal is only required for installation. Maybe a bit rescue with a live system at best (but they already have drivers for ATI and Nvidia, like nouveau)

> VESA stuff is good for various live CD when you don't know the specific
> target machine but you know that in this days it has 99,99% VGA card with
> VESA VBE that alloews you use graphics on some basic level. Without it you
> need fallback to VGA or provide specific drivers for different VGA card but
> you still couldn't cover the future models. So VESA is good for basic
> system
It _would_ be good yes. But nobody on Linux is interested in that, since better drivers (nouveau or the old nv) exist. The trend is to pull this even more into the kernel (kernel mode switching recognizes the exact card)

> And also for those who still write some graphics code under DOS or their
> alternative mini OS. Belive or not such people still lives ;-)
But nobody _designs_ for DOS requirements anymore. The group is simply too small. (maybe one or two specialised industrial producers excluded, but they will have a relatively old and narrow set of products for extortionist prices, the reason why we don't buy our industrial PCs there)

That is my point. It has no point to say that it could be cared for, or that there are still people that use it. It is not a factor in development of new hardware or its software (read: bios), and hasn't been for years, and what's left from Dos bios support is a result of inertia, and it will only become less.

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