[Info-vax] Working with broken hardware, was: Re: DECnet Phase IV broken after VSI update

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-11-06, Robert A. Brooks <FIRST.LAST at vmssoftware.com> wrote:
>
> Unless they are referring back to the mid-90's when the early PCI Ethernet 
> adapters on Alphas were not-so-great, that info is a bit stale.
>
> VMS Engineering (specifically, the guy who's been writing our Ethernet drivers 
> for over 30 years) has stated that auto-negotiate should always be used.
>
> If it doesn't work, he'll fix it, or determine that the switch is non-conforming 
> to the standard.
>

That's a very interesting way of expressing that and leads to a more
interesting general question:

Does VMS support hardware which doesn't correctly implement a standard
(by implementing a workaround as Linux tends to do), or has VMS Engineering
over the decades outright said that it doesn't follow the standards,
so it's broken, so we won't support it ?

If it's the latter, is that going to change for x86-64 VMS, given some
of the hardware out there ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.