PC still playing Amiga catchup

[Trev]

... that is why the place where I work has an IT department staffed with about 200 personnel, they are either fixing computers or re-installing windows on them.

I'm one of those IT department staffers and have been for about 15 years. Not in your company, most likley, but nonetheless, it's what I do. We spend the majority of our time dealing with application issues. Hardware and operating system issues are few and far between.

My one last thought, would you board an aircraft if you knew that windows was running all the digital instrumentation on it?, or would you drive a auto if you knew windows was running your auto computer?

Absolutely not. Windows wasn't designed for critical aircraft and auto systems. It's OK if Windows is running my stereo, though. EDIT: I wouldn't want Amiga OS flying the plane either. What was your point?

Now my A4000 which gets turned on for use at least twice a week hasn't crashed since 1993 and still has my data on it since then, and I must admit my 2 gig hard drive is getting quite full, I still have about 1.2 gig free for use, might be another 10 years and I will have to think about installing a larger hard drive.

At the moment, my towered A1200 mysteriously resets every time I attempt to use a Voodoo.card video mode. !@#% I would reinstall and get everything to a known good state, but something's wrong with Paula or one of the CIAs. Every drive I try seeks/clicks three times and then fails to read the disk.

PC users can you claim this?

I'd been running my last Windows XP-based system using the same base install for about three years when one of my hard disks failed. (Before anyone says anything re: my previous post, yes, I'd been ignoring the warning signs.) It was a stripe sans parity, so I lost everything. C'est la vie. There's nothing I hate worse than dealing with backups, so of course, I don't run them at home.

[Trev]

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Microsoft publishes more documentation than any other software vendor, and it's all publicly available. For free.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hey Trev, I really read a lot of BS on this post but this line takes the cake.

You're kidding, right? I'm assuming you haven't visited Microsoft's web site any time in the last ten years.

By the way nice Penquin avatar, does this mean your a Linux fan boy?

You meant "you're," but that's OK. No, it means I run (or ran--it's been a while) Linux on my Sega Dreamcast, hence the orange Sega Swirl.

I enjoy computing in general and have lots of different systems. I can afford whatever the industry throws at me, so unlike most people, I don't have to choose one thing or the other and then vehemently claim I made the best choice in a dire effort to avoid buyer's remorse.

The only thing that's brought me close to fanboy status is The Cure, but even Robert Smith tests my patience now and again.

At any rate, we both like Amigas or else we wouldn't be here, right?

[Trev]

And THIS is what happens with modern hardware when you force developers to "bang on the hardware" vs developer friendly, API driven devkits.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/17/ghostbusters-on-ps3-lags-behind-360-version-developer-explains/

Dude. Thanks for that. I haven't opened my PS3 copy of Ghostbusters yet, so I'm going to take it back and get the Xbox 360 version instead. I prefer the Xbox 360 controllers anyway. I'm 6'5". The PlayStation controllers are made for little people with little hands. ;-)

[Trev]

Poor cache usage...:roflmao:

Could Windows problem be poor usage of the cpu cache? I'm using XP and whenever the optical drive spins up the OS slows to a crawl. Why is it putting the brakes on? Why does XP need to wait for the drive... how many cpu cycles does it need? Optimally, the most important OS functions should stuffed in the cpu cache (its 2MB). If that was the case, Windows would be blindingly fast.

Windows doesn't slow down, the shell (explorer.exe) does. Try disabling autoinsert notification/autoplay.

CPU caches don't work that way. Windows does, however, keep all the key bits in memory.

[Trev]

Nonsense that I think 68000 is compatible with 68020 and you don't.  If you can establish that 0x86 is less incompatible, perhaps I can take you seriously.

I'm confused by this whole argument. The differences between the various 680X0 revisions are well-known and well documented. The differences between the various 80X86 revisions are well-known and well documented as well. So, any code that relies on a feature of an earlier version of a CPU that doesn't exist or has changed in a future version of a CPU will be incompatible without some sort of workaround, e.g. 68040.library.

I don't see the lack of VM86 when an Intel or AMD processor is running in 64-bit mode as a limitation. One could suppose, however, that if Intel had designed the x64 model, it might have included it. Intel chose to focus on the Itanium, though, and the market adopted an arguably incomplete model produced by AMD.

As an architect/engineer/administrator/monkey of Windows systems, the last thing I want to support is software running in NTVDM, whether it's DOS or Windows based. If you're not gaming, NTVDM is wonderful; however, I've always disliked not being able to arbitrarily choose the target VM of a Windows application. It's either shared or isolated. It would have been nice to include support for multiple shared VMs that didn't require working around limitations in the GUI.

There. That was a Microsoft criticism. I have lots of them, but I still like Windows, and in general, Microsoft does a great job of making sure my business runs smoothly. Don't start with the virus stuff. Please. Humans work for Microsoft, and humans are fallible. That's never going to change. Somewhere underneath all the logos and litigation, there's a software engineer just like you and me, working under extreme amounts of pressure, just doing his best to feed his family and produce a product of which he can be proud, in so far as the project and the market will let him.

[Trev]

I had both machine set to the same BPM... but the Amiga drifted out quite dramatically over the course of 3min... I had no choice but to work out the Average BPM and use that... quantizing the musical data on the PC later... That was my first experience with the lameness of the Amiga's timing.

OctaMED (or CAMD or the interface driver?) doesn't support an external clock? Can it act as a clock source? EDIT: OK, so I guess CAMD just passes along system messages, and it's up to the devices and sequencer to decide how to use and interpret clock messages. There's an old thread here on Amiga.org talking about MED supporting legacy MIDI clock messages but not MIDI timecode. Sounds like Bars 'N Pipes is good to go, though. Wish I still had my AMAS. Just have the DSS8+ now and no MIDI interface. Don't feel like wiring my own (which I'd probably foul up anyway).

I have a Creative/E-mu 1212m in my PC. It's a decent card, but I'm not very fond of the software interface.

I just bought Logic Express for my MacBook Pro, and I've got my Motif ES8 connected via USB. I've been trying to track down an mLAN interface, but they're no longer in production, and I don't trust eBay for this. :-/ I also need a low latency audio interface for the Mac. Any suggestions? Something that's supported on both Windows and Mac OS would be ideal, but not required. Cost is a factor, but only because I don't plan on using the interface very often; otherwise, I'd probably just buy something nice from MOTU.

[Trev]

Get a clue.  I am talking 680x0.  There is NO "great" difference to need a library.  You want to exaggerate and distort the truth and claim there's a great difference then that's as good as saying they are incompatible.  Biased.

Everyone's been pretty clear about where the compatibility issues lie. You can't use a 68040 or 68060 in an Amiga without certain software workarounds, and optimizations (read: hacks) that work on a 68000 might not work on a later processor.