[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Radius Mac clones



>>>>> "John" == John de Bruin <j.bruin@auckland.ac.nz> writes:
In article <30EDE214.5C26@auckland.ac.nz> John de Bruin <j.bruin@auckland.ac.nz> writes:


    John> I've heard many times how ARDI designed Executor from the
    John> ground up, using clean room techniques, because of the
    John> proprietory and secret nature of the Macintosh toolbox
    John> ROMs. Hence programs which use certain undocumented features
    John> of the ROMs will not work on Executor.

I'm sure it sounds like an old song and dance to people who have
followed us closely, but it's the truth and it explains questions that
come up frequently, so you'll probably hear it more, too.

Technically we don't really need the ROMs, per-se, we only need a
functional specification to work from.  In other words as long as we
know what every single routine has to do, and all the side-effects
that applications could count on, we could fairly easily code up
equivalents.

The way "clean room/dirty room" engineering works is you get "dirty"
engineers to examine ROMs and write functional specs and they then
pass those specs to a bunch of lawyers who make sure that the specs
are functional in nature and do not reveal any implementation
details.  The lawyers then give the specs to the clean room engineers
who then implement according to specs.  This is expensive, but it's
doable.  It would take any company other than ARDI too long to do this
though, due to the amount of work required.  Luckily, we wouldn't
really have to implement much new stuff, just make sure all the
side-effects were properly handled.

    John> How then, do you explain the new Power Mac clones, from
    John> companies like Radius? These machines are supposed to be
    John> 100% Mac compatible. Do they reverse engineer the ROMs, do
    John> they buy the ROMs from Apple, or has Apple made avaiable the
    John> code for these ROMs in the "Open Reference Platform" or
    John> something like that.

They have not reverse engineered the ROMs.  There have only been a
very small handful of companies who have tried anything even vaguely
similar to what we've done, the most notable were Nutek and Quorum.
Both had much less compatibility that we have and went (virtually)
bust trying to do what we have done.

Radius and PowerComputing use Apple's ROMs via a license from Apple.
We approached Apple's licensing department and were given the names of
a couple people to talk to, but they did not return our e-mail.
During MACWORLD Expo you can bet that we'll be talking (at least
unofficially) to many Apple employees.

Apple's official position is that they will not license any 68k based
stuff, so we'll have to get a PPC emulator going before we can
officially license Apples's software (unless they change their mind).
Luckily, VCPU will make a PPC emulator relatively easy, *and* even
without Apple's permission we can make Executor so that you will be
able to drop a copy of System 7.5 on top of it and have it work.  That
requires a lot of work -- more than the few engineers we currently
have, *but* it's work that we understand and we have a tremendous
framework to start with, so it's largely a matter of getting money for
engineers, which is something else we're pursuing at MACWORLD Expo.

    John> I'd be interested to know what Radius and the other clone
    John> maker(s) do in this regard.

My understanding is that they not only license the ROMs, but they also
license much more, too, including ASICs that are in such short supply
that Gateway wasn't able to cut a licensing deal with Apple because
they weren't able to turn out the ASICs quick enough.

    John> Bye....  -- ________________________________

    John> John de Bruin Email: j.bruin@auckland.ac.nz

I hope this explains some of the legal issues involved.  These are all
matters that we're pursuing with vigor.


--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com


Follow-Ups: References: