Tucker, David wrote: > They may not be concerned about running
Windows app (for a time, I had an SGI X86 PC that did run windows) but there are plenty of peripheral that run on the X86. Your SCSI card or fancy new video card use X86 bios code. Plug one into the PCI bus of a sparc, and you wont get far. The PCI card bios can be redone, but that's expensive and you will loose the advantages of commodity goods.
The statement about PCI hardware being tied to he processor isn't entirely true. There's a ton of hardware I've used in both Alpha and x86 machines, from SCSI controllers to sound cards. Right now I have a graphics card in my Alpha that used to be in my K6/166. There might be some weird platform-dependent cards, but in every case I've seen, as long as the driver compiles on the architecture, the card will work.
-- Soren Harward [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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