3 Jan
2024
3 Jan
'24
3:04 a.m.
On Tue, Jan 2, 2024 at 3:50 PM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
I never said Sun or anyone else actually shipped it --
only that it was around, and there was a lot of discussion about using it/trying to create
a boot ROM standard one of some type.
Sorry! I didn't mean to imply that you had; rather, I thought that
they had because I thought I remembered seeing it on Sun-3x, but I
think I'm just misremembering.
IIRC I remember that NCR was messing with it for their
88K boxes (which I had a hand in killing). But NCR switched to all x86-based (their
"7 levels "strategy) for everything from Cash Registers/ATMs to their largest
Database machines. They had always been in the "better and cheaper than IBM"
business, particularly in their computer products. [1] So after they switch, their boots
start to be all BIOS and EBIOS flavored.
Poor suckers. :-(
But other Motorola folks I was working with at the
time were exploring OF. I had it on a 68K and another 88K prototype machine at one point
(I remember the "ok" prompt), and I remember I somehow had a source distribution
tape. I was an independent consultant then and wrote a couple of drivers under contract
for some different folks. I can not think of the firm's name now -- there was another
68K workstation firm here in Lowell, MA. They actually wrote and made a MacOS emulator
work with their UNIX under covers. I've forgotten most of the details now, but they
may have been one of the folks who was playing with OF.
My memory is that I first encountered it at one of my consulting gigs.
That's cool. It's sad that, around the time of the 386, we didn't have
more x86 vendors doing something like OF. Maybe we could have avoided
a bunch of big messes. Maybe not.
1] When they threw the x86 everywhere die, they also
started using Microchannel (the only large licensee I know of for it -- everyone else
stayed with ISA/EISA and then later PCI from DEC/AMD) - tossing out all the Moto IP like
VME that so many UNIX systems had used).
I knew a bunch of folks in the early/mid 90s who were pretty tight in
the IBM camp; RS/6000's were shipping on MCA and they said they saw
better IO performance than with PCI for a couple of generations.
- Dan C.