3 ms·

And early 90s to mid 2000s was an era of especially standardized hardware. Every box was x86+RAM+mobo+HDD slapped together. With single CPU cores not getting mu

And early 90s to mid 2000s was an era of especially standardized hardware. Every box was x86+RAM+mobo+HDD slapped together. With single CPU cores not getting much faster, hardware is becoming more specific again, making tight integration more advantageous.

trelane 3y ago
It still wasn't that great back then. Even APM was wonky. Even back then, there was a tonne of firmware, and bugs got worked around in (Windows-only) drivers and INF files. The amount of firmware has since exploded, and it's gotten much more complex to boot (pun intended.) I think that's more the problem than specialized hardware.