Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!agate!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!elaine11.stanford.edu!mckenzie From: mckenzie@elaine11.stanford.edu (David McKenzie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!! Message-ID: <1990Nov8.222332.9851@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 8 Nov 90 22:23:32 GMT References: <1990Nov7.212944.11043@agate.berkeley.edu> <1990Nov8.175911.16932@agate.berkeley.edu> Sender: news@portia.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System) Organization: Stanford University - AIR Lines: 30 In article <1990Nov8.175911.16932@agate.berkeley.edu> knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group) writes: >>So what kind of peripherals does Unix make so easy to connect? >>...If you add some funky device you need a driver. > >Precisely. Someone has written a driver for virtually everything under the >sun for 4.3BSD Unix. Did you know that there is even a driver for drum >memory on the NeXT! (Not that it's particularly useful nowadays.) A Mac >also needs drivers for different devices. Thus, a Mac user cannot take >a peripheral only originally intended for large Unix machines and connect >it to a Mac without going through the pain of writing a driver. Have you >ever heard of a Mac user writing a device driver? I don't think so. > C'mon - let's get real here. How many Unix USERS have written a device driver? This is at best a non-trivial task. I happen to have been involved in writing drivers for both kinds of systems, and I would rate the difficulties as approximately equal - it really depends heavily on the complexity of the device. As for 'peripherals originaly intended for large Unix machines', very few personal computer owners want or need such things, even if they could afford them. How many NeXT users have or will have refrigerator-sized high-speed 6250bpi magtape drives at home, for example? (Or even 8mm Exabytes or HP plotters, for that matter.) Administering a BSD Unix system is a complex pain in the &*%*! (At least if you want to provide of any of the more 'advanced' services available - e-mail routing and remotely-mounted file systems are two good examples.) Just ask any system administrator. A NeXT is only going to be easy to run to the extent that it hides BSD from its owner. David McKenzie mckenzie@portia.stanford.edu