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From: mykes@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at home...)
Message-ID: <1991Jan20.042633.16661@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 20 Jan 91 04:26:33 GMT
References: <42731@ut-emx.uucp> <1991Jan19.035418.15192@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <42792@ut-emx.uucp>
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 123

In article <42792@ut-emx.uucp> awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes:
>In article <1991Jan19.035418.15192@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> mykes@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>
>>Do Desk Accessories take up RAM or not?  You can fit 200 desk accessories in 
>>memory at the same time?  (Just a question ...).  Also, programs that reside
>
>As I understand them, desk accessaries reside primarily on disk with a pointer
>to the code on disk.    The desk accessory is invoked via a menu.
>
>>entirely on disk require NO cpu time either.  I could also point out that
>>the standard Amiga is 7.14 MHz and is slower than your 8MHz machine.  However,
>>the copper and blitter give it an effective rate of about 10MHz while the
>>Mac has wait states that reduce it's 8MHz to effectively about 5, but even
>>as it may be, the 7.14 MHz machine has more than passable performance all
>>the time.
>
>First, the "passable" performance I was talking about was on a 2.5 meg Mac Plus
>running 50-60 INITs with 2-3 applications under MultiFinder.  Among those INITs
>were a network mail server, a peer to peer file server, online spelling checker,
>and a bunch of other stuff.
>
I think you might be able to run 2 or 3 applications on a 2.5 Meg Amiga and
still have lots of RAM left and still have zero performance problem.  As you
add programs to the Amiga, you just use up the RAM they need.  Applicatons
that are waiting for input take ZERO cpu time, so there is NO performance
decrease.  Naturally, if you start 2 ray tracing programs at the same time,
they will take just a tad longer than if you ran one and let it finish and
then ran the other, but the system does exactly what you expect.  The only thing
that pushes the Amiga, performance-wise, is trying to do a ton of 3-d type
stuff in real time, just something that NO 68000 could do no matter how
well it was programmed.

>Every machine I've ever used had some sort of performance limits, and I like to
>see how far I can push it before I have to "dumb it down".  I find it hard to
>believe that you can't load the Amiga up in the same way.  (Rhetorical, I KNOW
>it could be done.)
>
>>Unfortunately, there will be 80Million CLI based PC machines by 1992, and
>>ALL those people seem to be able to deal with the CLI.  The Amiga is a 
>
>WRONG.  Most of those people know how to type "123", "dir a:", and "copy 
>a:filename.ext b:", but ALL 80 million do NOT know how to use a CLI.  Add to
>that the fact that, on average, they run fewer programs on their CLI-only
>machine than the comparable GUI user does.
>
I wish all you had to do was type 1-2-3 on the Amiga, but there is no such 
program.  Blame it on Lotus.  Blame it on CBM.  You can do "dir a:" on the
Amiga, and almost any other MS-DOS command (read that MS-DOS command, not
invocation for an Application).  Anybody who wishes that MS-DOS had MORE
RAM usable, or multitasking, or whatever, should graduate to the Amiga
(this is .advocacy...).  And no matter how you slice it, 80 Million is
still 1/3 of the US population and is still 10x the number of Macs and
Amigas combined...  Too bad we are the only enlightened ones (SARCASM intened
here).  But all those unenlightened do productively use those machines,
or they would stop selling.

>>natural machine for all those people familiar with MS-DOS because the CLI
>>environment is similar enough on the Amiga and because you can run more than
>
>Uh, the CLI on the Amiga may be similar to DOS AFTER you have mastered the 
>Amiga CLI, but when a friend of mine started setting up his 500 we had a LOT
>o

f problems trying to use our DOS experience.
>
Has either of you ever set up a DOS machine?
>>one at a time.  I would like to think, however, that the Amiga provides a 
>>little more than the PC does in the way of user interface (WIMP), and a lot
>>more in terms of standard configuration (copper, blitter, 4096 colors, mouse,
>>multitasking, (and a list that goes on and on and on and on... ).
>
>With 16 Mhz 286s with 256 color VGA and Windows machines running around $1500,
>some of those advantages are starting to blur.
>
A more realistic way of phrasing this is that the disadvantages of the PC are
starting to blur.  Remember, the features of the Amiga come STOCK with EVERY
machine sold.  You do not have to spend an extra dime on any one of them.  Those
who bought STOCK PCs a year ago or more have had to spend extra money to get
similar, if not as powerful features.  I gave up on the PC a long time ago
when I realized how medicore it would always be (640K used to be enough RAM).
I sure wish I could put 64MB of RAM on my AT&T 6300 like I can on my Amiga.
Don't get me wrong, what they have done with the PC is impressive, because it
should have died a long time ago, but somehow they have always managed to
breath new life into it (faster CPUs, graphics, mice, WIMP interfaces).  But
if you are a software developer for the PC, you have to write lots of software
just to support the different mice, video adapters, sound boards, operating
system environments, etc.  Then you get to work on what the application does.
One last point, with VGA, you get 256 colors, and with HAM you get 4096.
AT THE SAME TIME.  And a 16MHz 286 is still running programs written for
an 8-bit 8088 99% of the time.  I hardly call it an advantage.  If you want
to compare the best of both worlds, compare a 25MHz 68040 with a 25MHz 486 and
you will find that the 486 is half as powerful.

>>We both agree that the Mac would be nicer if you could do more in less
>>memory.  We also both agree that the Mac has a superior user interface,
>>even if it requires significant effort to program and is near impossible
>>to port from.
>
>I'm no "real" programmer, but I've written BASIC programs for both the IBM and
>the Mac.  The Mac programs are a little more difficult to work with because you
>have to add the interface, but if I can do it, I suspect any programmer whose
>techniques haven't petrified can learn to adapt.  I set up one of the BASIC
>utilities I wrote to background and it took no extra code.  This may be a 
>result of how the BASIC compiler handles the code, but it can be done, and 
>easily.  (Of course, I STILL don't know why it executes faster in the 
>background than in the foreground.)
>
>Porting is just a matter of what your development enviroment supports.  If you
>had one that shared a common library of calls with the mac end, you could port
>just fine.  Ask Microsoft how they do it.

Microsoft is a multibillion dollar company.  They can put a large team of
engineers on each version.  They do it with hard work and lots of programmer
hours.  Given those resources, it is easy to port.  But if you are not as
wealthy, it is much more painful.  Learning to Adapt to the Mac is a 3 year
learning curve for even the best of programmers (to become fully competant
at the entire set of OS calls).  This does petfrify me.  On the other hand,
the Amiga is quite easy to port to from the PC or Unix or the ST (in 'C').
I think you underestimate how difficult it is to support a library of calls
with the Mac end.  I have ported from the Mac to the Amiga and even though
the CPUs are both 68000, you either have to rewrite significant parts of the
MAC OS to run on the Amiga, or you have to rewrite the application from
scratch.  Either choice is a big loss.