[KLUG Members] Ahh Cyrix, I remember him well...

[Randall Perry]

Yeah, I remember when wild-eyed Glenn Henry (former Big Blue upper level 
developer) went to IDT with the idea to create the winchip (centaur).  If I 
remember right, they licensed the MMX instructions out so they would be 
compatible with Intel and AMD's MMX.  Cyrix made up their own MMX instructions 
(I got bit by that when I put a winmodem-junk into a commodity Cyrix M2-200 
box-junk that required MMX).  They also used that MediaGX processor in a 
couple of notebooks and desktop mobos.  Terrible performance with MS OSs.

I also remember when IBM concurrently manufactured processors for AMD, Cyrix 
and WinChip (pretty much everyone non-intel) and yet IBM always prefers the 
Intel way.  Kind of like why AOL uses a hacked up Internet Explorer when they 
purchased Netscape a technological century ago.  

On another note, I am still chuggin' away on resolving these problems I 
inherited.  Adam, since you are so fond of the RS6000s, I might have to give 
you a holler on them.  This is my first exposure to them.  

On a lighter note, things are much nicer, now that I just got a new Inspiron 
4100. (PIII 1.13, ATI Radeon, DVD/CDRW, 320MB RAM, 30gig, Accupoint (eraser 
head) and touchpad).  I just dumped and reloaded it with WinXP, W2k Server and 
just downloaded Debian Potato ISOs to load.  Things almost feel normal again.  


Randall Perry
www.domain-logic.com