On Mon, 16 Mar 2020 21:29:51 -0400
Dan Purgert <dan@???> wrote:

> I guess what I'm trying to ask is what would be so bad about a "RISC-V
> Hobby Linux Machine(tm)" only offering these "older" peripheral
> connectivity interfaces in interests of being inexpensive and also
> preserving end-user freedom?
>
> Or ... maybe I'm just a bit crazier than I thought.

Probably <VBG>.
The question is exactly what peripherals were you thinking on running
off it? Some examples from here;

My PIO NEC Pinwriter printers, which are very nice for textt and basic
graphic output, suffer from lack of ribbons because the driver foam in
the ribbon cartridges have dis-intergrated with age.

My PIO/SIO Gestetner Canon SX2 laser printer has flat rollers.

I shudder to think what the condition of my QIC (PIO) & DAT tapes (SCSI
is like. It is bad enough that the DLT-IV drives are both cactus and
will cost more to repair than purchasing a new LTO-6 drive.

There is probably other stuff buried away waiting for the next major
clean out.

The real problem with old stuff is that if it doesn't work then it is
usually isn't economic to repair and that the newer stuff is so much
better and cheaper.

This was brought home when someone gifted me an Intergraph 5RU Quad
Zeon system and two similar sized external hard disk boxen holding 12
FW scsi seagate barracutta hard drives. Very nice kit, until I
costed the price of the needed two FW scsi cables to join both boxen to
the CPU boxen. It was far cheaper to buy double the hard disk capacity
in new SATA drives.

So, even if it was built, there is probably going to be negligible
demand for it for that reason.

Having started my "IT" career when it was called EDP, I am all for
alternative hardware and for this reason have only purchased AMD
kit(for better or worse)for a decade, so I'd gladly welcome another
alternative HW system, but RISC(IBM) and very wary.