4 ms·

There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, sta

There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). It also helps to have systems that are slow or have low memory, occasionally they hit bugs that are unnoticed on modern hardware. Alpha may have been interesting in that it had some peripheral similarities to PC machines, but were actual 64-bit computers in the 90s. For kernel driver hackers, popping in a PCI network card that was probably never tested on anything besides a x86 PC, getting it to pass packets, and then making it your home firewall, was a thing of beauty.

kristopolous 10y ago
you interested in one? I got openbsd and openvms disks for you and the machine itself. You can have that beauty again. You can put it next to the HPPA you'll be getting as the door prize.
- notaplumber 10y ago
  That's tempting, but I'm probably not nearby. If you're really offering hardware, SCSI disks etc. OpenBSD developers surely might jump at the chance. http://www.openbsd.org/want.html http://www.openbsd.org/want.html
danieldk 10y ago
There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). I think that trying 'oddball' platforms indeed help shaking out bugs. But if that's the goal (rather than supporting the five users that still use such hardware), wouldn't it be more attractive to build pseudo-platforms in an emulator that simulate other architecture choices, and run it on fast and easy-to-get x86_64 hardware?
- IcePic 10y ago
  You don't find races and bugs on emulators the same way as on real hardware. Also, if you do find a bug in your emulated environment, how much time would you spend wondering if the emulator is bad or your code? Also, there is a real chance that the emulator would let stuff pass (like allowing code make memory or bus access on odd address or some other restraint) which really shouldn't be allowed and you would not notice it.

kristopolous 10y ago

you interested in one? I got openbsd and openvms disks for you and the machine itself. You can have that beauty again. You can put it next to the HPPA you'll be getting as the door prize.

notaplumber 10y ago
That's tempting, but I'm probably not nearby. If you're really offering hardware, SCSI disks etc. OpenBSD developers surely might jump at the chance. http://www.openbsd.org/want.html http://www.openbsd.org/want.html

danieldk 10y ago

There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). I think that trying 'oddball' platforms indeed help shaking out bugs. But if that's the goal (rather than supporting the five users that still use such hardware), wouldn't it be more attractive to build pseudo-platforms in an emulator that simulate other architecture choices, and run it on fast and easy-to-get x86_64 hardware?

IcePic 10y ago
You don't find races and bugs on emulators the same way as on real hardware. Also, if you do find a bug in your emulated environment, how much time would you spend wondering if the emulator is bad or your code? Also, there is a real chance that the emulator would let stuff pass (like allowing code make memory or bus access on odd address or some other restraint) which really shouldn't be allowed and you would not notice it.