RE: Re: EIB Instabus

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Buckley [mailto:db@xxxxxxx]=20
>Guys, guys, guys - hold it.

Good info David (as always!)

My own interest in EIB would ultimately end at the BCU point, as you
sugges=
t - talking to the EIB network from another system would give the
functiona=
lity required to use it - but whether EIB/KNX ever becomes more than a
curi=
osity or niche market is, I feel, the main thing - and that's down to the
a=
ccessibility of the system to manufacturers.=20

>But I'm sceptical as to whether IP will ever be a core control=20
>protocol,=20

I'm really coming at this from one specific angle... One of my lecturers
at=
Uni was Duncan Smeed, one of the guys who developed the Dragon32 - he was =
emphatic that the Intel architecture would fizzle out, being technically
in=
ferior to... just about everything. He predicted the demise of Ethernet,
be=
cause Token Ring was just soo much better. He also stated with certainty
th=
at natural language processing was the only way to do speech recognition,
b=
ecause processors would never be fast enough to simply brute force compare
=
waveforms. As I recall, he made a couple of wild comments about the death
o=
f Unix as well, because "everyone would rather use the Mac interface
than a=
command line" (I'm sure he just luuuurves Jaguar with it's Unix heart
;) )

The point, rather than simply gloating at the academic genius of my former
=
tutor, is that in almost every case where there is a technically inferior
a=
pproach that hits big time in the marketplace first... the technical
issues=
simply don't matter any more - and everywhere where price/performance is t=
he issue... Moore's law comes racing to the rescue, and the simple passage
=
of time does the rest. And the thing that's often missed out... is that
the=
"inferior" solution ends up being better in the long run than the
"superio=
r" one.. the VHS/Betamax thing - When Betamax died, the VHS systems
were no=
t as good - but current VHS kit is better than Betamax ever was.

My first PC (http://home.hetnet.nl/~peter.verhaar/amstrad_ppc512.html
) was=
an 8088 running at just under 5Mhz with 512K of memory and no HD - but the=
IC that does all of the I/O ports (COM1/2/Parallel etc) in my current PC i=
s ridiculously faster with it's 32Mhz clock, has more memory (about 1Mb I
b=
elieve), and costs less than 12p - in 1988, no-one would have believed
that=
so much computing power could be so trivially available, or so cheap!

>I cant see that ethernet will be cheaper.

I can - for one reason, and one reason only - 1 manufacturer makes C-Bus
ha=
rdware, and they jealously guard their secrets - I believe that only a
smal=
l number of companies will manufacture EIB/KNX hardware.=20

But... literally thousands of manufacturers will be able to throw together
=
cheap and cheerful, fully standards compliant Ethernet for *buttons* in
the=
years to come.

I remember buying Fast Ethernet cards for a server at over =A3300 a pop
onl=
y 5-6 years ago - My usual supplier now sells no-name Fast Ethernet NICs
fo=
r about =A34, hell, you can go gigabit for =A320.=20

How much has the price of EIB kit come down in the six years since the
spec=
was published in 1998?

But hey, this is all just shooting the breeze... (it's fun though ;) )

I.