On Mon, 16 Mar 2020 21:29:51 -0400 Dan Purgert <d...@djph.net> wrote:
> I guess what I'm trying to ask is what would be so bad about a "RISC-V > Hobby Linux Machine(tm)" only offering these "older" peripheral > connectivity interfaces in interests of being inexpensive and also > preserving end-user freedom? > > Or ... maybe I'm just a bit crazier than I thought. Probably <VBG>. The question is exactly what peripherals were you thinking on running off it? Some examples from here; My PIO NEC Pinwriter printers, which are very nice for textt and basic graphic output, suffer from lack of ribbons because the driver foam in the ribbon cartridges have dis-intergrated with age. My PIO/SIO Gestetner Canon SX2 laser printer has flat rollers. I shudder to think what the condition of my QIC (PIO) & DAT tapes (SCSI is like. It is bad enough that the DLT-IV drives are both cactus and will cost more to repair than purchasing a new LTO-6 drive. There is probably other stuff buried away waiting for the next major clean out. The real problem with old stuff is that if it doesn't work then it is usually isn't economic to repair and that the newer stuff is so much better and cheaper. This was brought home when someone gifted me an Intergraph 5RU Quad Zeon system and two similar sized external hard disk boxen holding 12 FW scsi seagate barracutta hard drives. Very nice kit, until I costed the price of the needed two FW scsi cables to join both boxen to the CPU boxen. It was far cheaper to buy double the hard disk capacity in new SATA drives. So, even if it was built, there is probably going to be negligible demand for it for that reason. Having started my "IT" career when it was called EDP, I am all for alternative hardware and for this reason have only purchased AMD kit(for better or worse)for a decade, so I'd gladly welcome another alternative HW system, but RISC(IBM) and very wary. _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng