PC still playing Amiga catchup

[EvilGuy]

So let's see the code where user requests index 3 swapped with index 15 and works for majority of PCs.

Using OpenGL, a GPU could probably swap the entire scene out and redraw it faster than an Amiga could swap two colour indexes.

[EvilGuy]

Given the resources available to the Amiga, yes, what it does with them is nothing short of outstanding by any measure you care to throw at it. No one here I think would deny that.

Its just a shame that you can't run AmigaOS on some modern hardware and see it really fly.

[EvilGuy]

true.  but as it stands as of this moment, i have a greater chance of suffering from malware on a  fresh out of the box windows install than I do on a fresh amiga os 3.1 install.  The why's, buts, ifs don't matter, thems the facts.

rotfl; what sort of Internet can a fresh install AOS3.1 reach anyway? Dodging malware because your computer is so ancient isn't a benefit for your system. Otherwise clearly the C64 is much better then an Amiga system because it can't get any malware at all.

[EvilGuy]

You can, with UAE. You can have the Amiga setup you could never afford, for free at that.

Okay, I forgot to add *natively*.

[EvilGuy]

People have problems in this thread sticking to the example.  I can also switch entire frames by changing a video memory ptr on Amiga.  But that isn't the point.

Modern hardware is so powerful that swapping an entire scene out using the GPU can be done so much faster compared to an Amiga swapping two colours around. Legacy Amiga hardware is old and slow.

PC still playing catchup? Sure, if digital, 9pin joysticks are your thing. But the rest of the world has moved on to big and better things.

[EvilGuy]

You are more restricted with APIs; APIs are slower and inefficient.  APIs are more inexact.  You can also update hardware and allow previous software to still run the same.

Yep, its so much better to bang the hardware directly have things break when new machines come out. Or new hardware comes out and the old software runs too quickly.

Coz banging the hardware directly has worked so well for the Amiga. Look where it is now..

[EvilGuy]

There has to be something wrong with their machines if they can't play back 10 audio streams concurrently. Most current generation games will throw a few dozen audio streams together at any given instant and find plenty of time to render some eye popping visuals.

But they won't be able to use a joystick as quick as an unexpanded A500 can! Bwahaha PCs suck so much!!!! :-)

[EvilGuy]

but they haven't, and at least some of them want a different scheduler to the standard one Linux gives them, but the the closest they have is to make you use a different kernel.

Executive for AmigaOS simply tried to bring over some of the UNIX scheduling abilities; UNIX already has fairly fine grained control over processes and prioritys ranging from userspace (ie, nice, renice ..) through to the POSIX system calls.

But really this is irrelevant; when I ran Executive on my Amiga, I left it at the defaults that the application recommended and forgot about it. The same applies pretty much with the stock kernel that Linux distros ship with. Somebody else has picked some decent settings and for 99% of the users they'll leave it as is.

It's only relevant to people when try to prove that a system that has had no development on it for the past 15 years is suddenly better then the latest tech.

[EvilGuy]

But none let you set the priority of individual tasks.

What? Have you used Windows or Linux in the last five years?

Windows:
Bring up task manager, Process Tab, right click on the intended process, select priority.

Linux:
Open up gnome-system-monitor, select processes, select intended process, select priority.

All nice and point and clicky.

[EvilGuy]

So why are there Linux kernels compiled with different schedulers readily available in most Linux repo's?  Must mean the Linux user community has already had this very discussion, and felt the need to re-compile their kernel with a new scheduler, just to try to catchup to the Amiga?  Kernels with different schedulers exist because they offer something the standard one doesn't.  Whether you want to make use of it is besides the point.

Some people want to use Linux on servers, so they have a different kernel to those that want to use it on a Desktop machine. Some people want a kernel that has a nice boot splash screen, whilst others don't want video output at all. And considering that Linux can
support so much more hardware then the AmigaOS can its not surprising that there are
so many different kernel versions available.

Of course, changing schedulers from user space isn't anything spectacular. Linux has had the ability for a while, http://dynsched.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.linuxhowtos.org/System/iosched.htm for examples of changing the process and IO schedulers. Normally when kernels are built all of the schedulers are built as well, its just a matter of changing the one the kernel is running with. And where the Amiga is still playing catchup - these are all part of the standard kernel - no third party hack like Executive on the Amiga, needed.

[EvilGuy]

The more people answered to you, the more you introduced captions to your arguments, and the gameport vs USB one is one of them. Sorry, the PC has ABANDONED gameports. The use USB for game controllers, so if you want to do a fair comparison, you have to deal with USB and FORGET gameports. You said "Amiga gameport can handle 1KHz", I answered "ANY USB port can handle 1 KHz as well, even more", and this ends up the argument. YOU decided to complicate it introducing "hardware banging" and assembly lines. And here started bullcrap.

Sounds like a better test; compare some digital USB joysticks on the Amiga vs the PC.

[EvilGuy]

Actually, I would favor not even fixing hardware bugs in future upgrades to hardware-- so it remains consistent.  In fact, many people use the hardware bugs as features in their applications and expect them.  

And here folks is one of the reasons why the Amiga croaked. You get an installed base of
"programmers" who know everything and expect bugs not to be fixed.

[EvilGuy]

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

As much as I dislike M$, I have to give them some credit. Their developer documentation
is pretty good.

[EvilGuy]

I have been half tempted to just run AmiWM, would have loved it had it continued development but its plain ugly by todays standards and lacking in functionality.  Even Gnome is missing some things I use on a day to day basis that KDE has, sadly.

That's what I've been saying for years; release an Amiga window-manager for X and make it compatible with KDE and Gnome or the FreeDesktop.org now. Sell it for $9.95.