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

[Dave Froble]

On 11/6/2021 4:42 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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.
>

Which then brings up the question, just how many work-arounds do you want?
Perhaps until the code for work-arounds exceeds the code for the OS?

Since you asked, I'd suggest supporting conforming HW, and skip the rest.

If using a VM, the issue probably isn't.  For "bare metal" (how did we ever
come up with such an idiot name?) as mentioned elsewhere, x86 VMS will
support a limited set of HW.  Probably all new stuff, which most likely
doesn't include past kludges.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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