Similar (compatible, I hope) grumbles incoming. Feel free to delete. On Sat, Aug 8, 2026, at 9:08 PM, Brian L. Stuart wrote: > > I simply cannot fathom why people still use that steaming pile > of garbage. The x86 was a disgustingly ugly architecture from > day one, and it has aged like a jug of milk sitting in the Texas > sun. No one with any engineering taste would have chosen it > over the 68000 or the z8000 or pretty much anything else available. > For that matter, any of us could have designed a nicer machine > with a 6809 and a handful of TTL for a MMU than that thing that > "legitimized" something, though I still haven't figured out what. > That so many happily accepted SMM without taking it as a sign > to run away as far and as fast as possible, I can only attribute > to brain damage.
The late 70s/early 80s went something like this: Every computer manufacturer but IBM: Innovating to provide more power for the price. Even Apple figured out how to make a 68k run with an 8-bit bus, (or rather, Jeff Raskin did,) though they didn't use it. IBM: Does none of that, just chucks in the cheapest "16-bit" chip they can find into their overpriced machine. The buying public: EYE BEE EM QUA LI TEE EYE BEE EM QUA LI TEE ... It was creepy! Even at the time, when I was a little kid, I was weirded out by people actually believing and maintaining IBM's reputation. I may not have properly understood the issues at the time, but still... LOL! As for "legitimized", I wish I didn't understand what that meant or how it worked for mp3 players, microcomputers, smartphones... I had a smartphone in 2002 and a PDA with a very iphone-ish UI (but better!) a year before that. I could have had one years earlier. Apple doesn't innovate, as a general rule. What's that quote about the individual being smart but people en masse being stupid? SMM is for when a node in your supercomputer goes down, right at the far end of the building. You can use SMM to reboot it rather than walking over there. Why it's enabled in consumer machines, I don't want to know. I've heard talk of using SMM to emulate for old OSs keyboards, mice, and floppy drives which are actually attached by USB, but my 2007-2011 Thinkpads don't do that. With them, the BIOS can operate the devices but once you go into 32-bit mode, you talk to USB or go without. ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T496d301e510c8cf1-Mbda2a242a8eb464268769c53 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
