PC still playing Amiga catchup

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Yes, the computing world might be very different if the Amiga had dominated instead of MSDOS/Windows, but we will never know how it would have been different, and how much it would have been the same.

If that'd be the case there'd be a site called IBM.org where nutcases complaining about nowadays rigid systems, hard to upgrade and if there'd be any competion on the hardware market, technology would've been much more advanced. Don Estridge will be honoured as a god.
Plus there'd be someone who states you should NOT use any other computer than a mil. spec. AT 5170.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

In the context of that display, "Billions of Interactions per Second"

It means buttocks in Dutch, though....

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Right. Do you even understand the difference between a PC and PC running Windows?

Linux isn't as real-time as AmigaOS, though...
But LynxOS actually is.
I sure do want to try that baby B-)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

That's good to know

You're never too old to learn

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Neither Linux or AmigaOS are realtime OS's and damn well you know it.

No, I really thought the amiga had fixed time slicing.

A nice read:rtos

[Speelgoedmannetje]

20 Years from now, when terabytes of non volatile memory are standard and video displays beam 3d images directly into your eyeballs, we're still gonna be arguing about joystick ports and boot up times.

I haven't heard anybody complain about 3d imagery.
But come on! Every OS nowadays is shoddy bloatware. Not that Amiga is nowadays the answer to that, but back in the heydays it was.

We just need a new OS, a new system, everything, and which is instantly on, before we can be the slightest bit excited.

I mean, Vista. hurray for eyecandy :roll:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

If you can handle a PC keyboard, you should be able to handle a well known gaming controller.

Hmno, with some games, digital control is just better, and those well known gaming controllers don't handle that very well, and mostly ends up as a secondary 'analog' controller, or for the use to change weapons, or browsing through inventory.
And with arcade games, use a digital arcade controller (IIRC there's one available, with connectors for quite some gameconsoles and computers). It's just better.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

I was referring to this controller: http://www.xgaming.com/two-player.shtml

[Speelgoedmannetje]

So far no one has shown how to surpass Amiga joystick port in speed using Game port nor via USB joysticks available.

So far no one has shown why API-based systems are superior to hardware level compatibility.  

I think you're mixing up the USB stack and the API. The USB stack can have a hickup from time to time (well, in Windows that is). But an API is just a redirection, which, especially nowadays, doesn't cause any noticeable delay.

So far no one has shown that simple example of palette index swap is faster using APIs.

Eh? Palette index swapping? For at least 10 years, that isn't been used anymore. (when a 32 bit palette became common in 3d acceleration)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

You have to do many I/O instructions to get the joystick status compared to a MOVE.W $DFF00A,D0.  As for palette modes, they still have them in Photoshop; the point there was an example where API access would be inferior to the extent that Amiga would out do it.

Duh, if that would be executed at the same speed of nowadays computers, OF COURSE an API between it slow things down.
Have you ever thought of companies not wanting to spend a lot of money to rewrite their code for every stupid little hardware revision? And btw. I tend to write my code as readable as possible, to make it  as maintainable as possible. API's make it easy for programmers to be quickly able to work with the hardware.

Of course it's fun to be hardware banging, to have all the hardware for yourself. In your own time.