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From: jabernathy@pro-houston.cts.com (Joe Abernathy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: FPE and a transwarp gs
Message-ID: <8910111039.AA15764@trout.nosc.mil>
Date: 11 Oct 89 07:47:11 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 44

Network Comment: to #1054 by philip@pro-generic.cts.com

> In what sense have you found the GS+TWGS+FPE to be faster than .. etc.

Philip, you have to keep in mind first and foremost that speed is a subjective
thing. The big thing affecting actual speed -- and actual speed is all that
matters -- is what kind of load the CPUs are being asked to pull. I try to
design tests that reflect this, but don't even pretend they're perfect. Most
benchmarks are perfectly useless, and I'm aware of this.

The next thing that's important to remember that speed here isn't speed there.
I spent over an hour on the phone with Bill Mensch yesterday, and one of the
things he stressed at length was that 20 MHz of Macintosh is equal to 5 MHz of
Apple II, owing to design considerations in the main microprocessor the
machines are built around. (In particular, the formula is always Macintosh
MHz/4 = Apple II.)

Finally, you have to look at what a particular architecture is designed to do.
Steve Jobs wanted a desktop publishing system, and he came up with the finest
one available. But do anything else with a Mac and you've got one overburdened
machine on your hands. Sure, you can buy a Mac IIci with supporting
peripherals for major megabucks and get around the problem, but I don't regard
that as an elegant solution. In almost everything you do -- other than desktop
publishing -- machines such as the Apple II and IBM clones have a dramatic
performance advantage over Macintosh.

As recently as a year ago, believed a lot of the heresay that says you can't
do serious work with an old Apple II, or IIGS, but after taking the time to
find out the truth, I think the only thing you can't do is trust the marketing
departments of Apple and IBM. (The formula for measuring IBM performance
against that of any Apple II, by the way, is generally: IBM MHz/5 = Apple II
... meaning you're gonna have to come up with something like a 60 MHz 80386
box in order to outrun me.

The point here is don't believe everything you here in ComputerCraft. Most of
those guys used to sell shoes for a living, and in my opinion they should
never have abandoned a trade for which they obviously are so well-suited.

Joe Abernathy


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