Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why clone the PS/2?
Message-ID: <22788@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 22 May 88 21:17:17 GMT
References: <8685@eleazar.Dartmouth.EDU> <5823@well.UUCP> <10600@steinmetz.ge.com> <5836@well.UUCP> <1252@uokmax.UUCP> <5884@well.UUCP> <5167@cup.portal.com> <488@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <1642@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 31

In article <1642@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
|What I want to know is, why the big excitement about cloning the PS/2?
|[..]
|The only thing it could be fore is the potential advanced throughput of
|the MCA bus, and that mainly on an 80386 machine.

The MCA bus allows much more than "advanced throughput".  It allows
real interrupt handling on a PC.  A flurry of interrupts on either a
PC or AT can cause lost interrupts, a serious problem in many cases
(eg serial lines).  The MCA bus would not loose them.

While this doesn't mean anything to a normal user (just how many
interrupts per second is a 1200 baud modem card going to create,
anyway?), it means a LOT in a multitasking or multiuser system -- both
increased throughput and increased reliability.

|Yet even IBM's
|PS/2 model 80 runs more slowly than many of the AT style clones,
|[..]Why the rush now?

Clone makers have historically made better, faster, cheaper equipment.
If the PS/2 80 is slower than some AT machines, just think how much
slower it will be than a PS/2 80 clone!  People who are buying a PS/2
80 for networking (probably the best reason to buy one) would go for a
faster machine; if it's cheaper, all the better.

The answer to your question:  There's money in it.  That's why it's
such a hot topic.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu