3 ms·
There are a lot of 10+ year old pa-risc machines out there than cannot be replaced. I remember an optic fiber network currently in use that had embedded pa-risc
by eb0la 10y ago
There are a lot of 10+ year old pa-risc machines out there than cannot be replaced. I remember an optic fiber network currently in use that had embedded pa-risc in underwater equipment, which means they had to be under maintainable for the 25 years of useable life of the cable.
If anyone knows some similar example please let us know.
- kev009 10y agoUsually this comes coupled with a period-correct OS, i.e. HP-UX. Yes, you could do an image loader for HP-UX bins on another OS, but that level of technical competence is rare. The reason why OS people do ports - portable software is good software. Avoiding ISA monoculture avoids shortcuts in kernel architecture. Some ISAs (alpha, sparc64) easily trigger invalid assumptions on ordering, alignment, endianness, etc improving overall quality. Alternative archs are also a great way to learn about areas of the system that are "done", so you can go fix and improve the things that were assumed to be "done" once you have requisite background.