dmd platform support - poll

[John Reimer]

Hello Christopher,

> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> 
>> "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:gj6e3m$1ilv$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> 
>>> two things:
>>> a) current hardware is 64bit (if you go and buy a PC),
>> Ah ha, there's that usual "if you go and buy a PC" catch. Which begs
>> the question, why would I? My existing system does everything I need
>> it to do perfectly fine. And since I'm not petty enough to allow
>> anyone to shame me into buying a new system just by calling my
>> *current* system "legacy", that leaves no real reason for me to buy a
>> new one.
>> 
> I tried that. But these days, it's *really* hard to find AT hard
> drives to replace the ones that fail.
> 


Hmm... you just reminded me of one of the big reasons I was motivated to 
upgrade my computers.  It wasn't always about an insatiable desire for bigger, 
better, faster.  I really disliked the whole "legacy" support engineered 
into the PC hardware -- it made things a horrible pain to fix and troubleshoot. 
 The PC hardware had to be consistantly designed for legacy 16-bit support 
because DOS/win95/win98 still had a strong hold on things.  Wishful thinking 
dictated that upgrading to the next thing would make things that much better 
and easier to fix/upgrade.  To some extent this may have been true.  USB 
saved us from endless dip switches and jumper changing (DMA/IRQ setup of 
COM/PARALLEL/Network ports were horrible -- remember the conflicts?) and 
improved the idea of hot-plugging. SATA drives eliminated setting drives 
to master/slave and figuring out which drive went where on PATA IDE channels. 
CMOS settings got better and more comprehensive.  Hardware got more integrated 
reducing the need for expansion cards.  

So, I'll have to admit that the so-called "craze" to move on from Legacy 
systems in not really as bad as it sounds.  Legacy systems were really quite 
horrid to use and  setup for many years.  So much of the advantage of modern 
system is reduced complexity in terms of upgrades and maintenance.  There 
were certainly advantages to be had the more removed one advanced from the 
legacy hardware.

I may have actually reached a point where my motivation to upgrade was significantly 
dampened by the fact that PC's technology had finally progressed to a more 
acceptable usability/maintenance levels.  Improvements in technology seem 
to be less about usability now and more about power and performance.  Perhaps, 
we've just finally managed to shake all those legacy trappings that were 
hampering us for so long.

-JJR