/

[amigaksi]

>My question is why are there so many camps in the Amiga scene (when we're not really that big anyway) and why are we at war with each other?

Each individual has his own desires so the communities that share a common goal can be said to be "united" else "divided".

I bet even the PC forums (big or small) are divided since some older PCs are better in some ways than newer ones, some older OSes are better than newer ones in some ways, etc.  People want things that make them happy (or think will make them happy) to exist eternally so Amiga lovers want Amigas to be backward compatible in every possible way to what they loved about the Amiga.  PC lovers want their PCs backward compatible with what they loved about their PCs.  Atari lovers want their Ataris backward compatible with what they loved about their Ataris.  

Then there are those that don't really "love" their computers but just a means to profit, adoration, and distinction.  For them, their caught up in the passion of getting the latest PC to fulfill their ambitions regardless of who it hurts, what damages it causes to the planet, etc.

[amigaksi]

by skurk on 2008/11/8 6:45:02

Quote:

>>    Atheist wrote:
>>    What really gets me, is that they've earned billions >>and billions and billions of $$dollar$$$, ...

>Come on, it's not that bad. I'm not a Windows user myself, >but I don't throw up when I'm forced to use it. It's not >intuitive nor professional, but it does pretty OK as a >novice/gamer OS...

You can dislike a product and still use it.  The world is flooded with Windows based PCs that others can't even compete.  Might does not make right.  They are targetting non-tech. markets which are much bigger than technical programming markets.  If they targetted market for programmers, the OSes and computers would be much different.  I for one would never buy a PC (if I had a choice) that is bunch of hodge podge of cycles based on caching, power management, branch prediction, varous speed memory chips depending on machine, dynamic processor speeds, imprecise API calls (that may have various ISA-VESA-PCI-AGP hardware or software emulation behind them), etc.

I don't agree with Atheist since some people may not care about these factors and are happy with hodge podge cycles and not knowing what's happening in the background on their PCs.

>10 bucks says you wrote your post in Windows.

100 bucks that the PC would be better if there were hardware standards and things did not rely on probability and worst case analysis rather than cycle exactness.

[amigaksi]

by Lorraine on 2008/11/10 16:34:09
...
>Yes I also am stuck in the functional PC ways of today, >with Windows XP being my primary OS. Shame on me
...
>@ amigaksi
>
>I use Windows every day but I don't really like the way >it's dominant - maybe why I'm so stuck in the past with my >hobby.

I use Windows 3.11 networked to another Windows XP machine.  Windows 3.11 is not 'dominant' and lets you do whatever you want with the machine and also allows me to run real-mode DOS.  I don't consider this nor using Amiga as "stuck in the past".  Windows 3.11 is also not prone to viruses/spyware as most of those are 32-bit apps so you don't need to constantly have some antivirus software hogging up 50% of your CPU time and there's no I/O protection on the ports so everything is as fast as possible.  I use hardware that is (was) standard so I don't need any drivers (sound blaster, IDE HDs, VESA-compatible VGA, etc.).  In fact, I backed up my entire Windows 3.11 OS on one 1.44MB floppy disk (and can boot from it).  I still need to have XP running because of "others".  Believe it or not you can directly write to the Sound Blaster I/O ports and VGA ports and create real-time sound and visual effects like on Amiga/Atari although not as exact and not with as much control.  I believe creativity in general took a hit by making standards at API level rather than at hardware level.  
Some things in the past are better than what's in the present so "stuck in the past" has no meaning in regards to technology.  I prefer computers that are simple so complicated programs can be written without having to worry about the complications of the processor.  I suggest that Intel drop the L1 and L2 caches, power management, branch prediction caches, and few other things from their processors.  They should slow down their processors so that each instruction executes in fixed amount of time or can easily be predicted as to the number of cycles.  I am pretty sure they can do 1 Ghz machine and run all of RAM at the same rate as the processor.  They can use a single branch prediction so we can predict whether a branch will occur or not and that would take care of most of tight inner loops.  Get rid of virtual/physical/linear memory bullcrap and let you align opcodes to physical memory locations (that factually exist) for optimizing code. A few more things but don't want to hog up the thread...

[amigaksi]

>...They can use a single branch prediction so we can predict whether a branch will occur or not and that would take care of most of tight inner loops....

That should be "whether a branch will occur cycles or not".  For example, if we were upgrading a 486-type processor (to some theoretical 886) and take the 3 cycles for branch taken and 1 cycle if it does not and put in a single branch prediction in parallel with previous instruction then following code for SQRT(EAX) for EAX=4 would take 18 cycles.

;EBX=FLOOR(SQRT(EAX))
Sqrt Proc Near
Xor EBX,EBX        ;1 cycle
SqrtEAX: Sub EAX,EBX   ;1 cycle
Inc EBX   ;1 cycle
Sub EAX,EBX   ;1 cycle
Jns SqrtEAX   ;3 first time, 0 afterwards, 1 last iteration
Dec EBX   ;1 cycle
RET   ;say 3 cycles