PC still playing Amiga catchup

[juan_fine]

Hi,

Not only that but while your computer is sleeping the power supply keeps running and a fan in the power supply stays on pulling through air, this draw through pulls in dust, but that just brings another market to the PC world, compressed air to blow the dust out of their many heat sink fans, and air ducts.

smerf

Ummm, time to wake up, it's 2009! My computer's power supply and fans power down to something like 5% or so when it sleeps. Even the pretty lights go out...

[juan_fine]

Hi,

@juan_fine,

Don't really know about that but my modern day computer keeps the fan in the power supply running when it sleeps, it may slow down some but still produces enough noise to bother my wife when she is trying to sleep, so I have gotten used to turning my computer off. By the way this is a totally year old machine built to play the most modern day games at very fast frame rates, equal to maximum pc test point computer. And by the way pretty blue lights still stay on after shutdown, the only way to get rid of them is to hit the main power switch off on the power supply, and yes juan_fine, my computer does have an off switch. Don't have to wait for winblows or linux to shut it down, but this is not advised with these two OS's

smerf

Hey, Smurf;
Really, my desktop is just like my laptop, I put it to sleep and it goes into an almost 0 power sleep. It takes about 5 seconds to shut down, and it's at the log in prompt around 5 seconds after I hit the spacebar. This is with the Windows 7 x64 RC, by the way. Now if I only had a fast joystick port I'd be a happy camper!

[juan_fine]

@Smurf,
I need Windows for my work, so I have one of those Frankenstein Machines, as they are called here. It has all sorts of nifty ports; 2xDVI, 1xSVHS, 1xHDMI, 1xVGA, 2xFirewire...but not a single game port - what WAS I thinking?
I have to admit that there are annoyances with Windows, but I don't do that much gaming on this maching, mainly just Recoil, and I just turn off the network when I do - you're right about the updates, but Avast! is the one that always gets me, it doesn't need a reboot, but I end up with an ugly blue box at the bottom of my right monitor.
I had a dream last night that someone in this thread claimed to have SoftAGA working...

Hi,

@Juan_fine,

Yes I am very disappointed with the PC joystick port, (by the way where is it located on the PC's I have spun my computer around several times and I can't locate it, but also I can't ever remember using a joystick on the PC and I play all the latest games, like far cry, far cry II, Doom3, fallout 3, Quake IV, crysis, and a lot of the old ones like half life the original, half life 2, Castle Wolfenstein, call of duty/2/3/4/??? or what ever ones I buy my son it is on here I just haven't got around to playing them, interesting.

Well anyhow seeing that having a joystick on your computer is very important by this forum, I have decided to take one of my old Amiga 500's that died, and remove the joystick port and circuitry for my PC, after all I put a lot of time and money in my new game rig and I want the best joystick port made.

I suggest that you do the same, remove the port from an old fried Amiga that you have been carrying for parts, and put it in your PC, I know it can be made to work somehow.

As far as the PC playing catchup to the Amiga, hey the PC can out do the Amiga in just about all major areas, like graphics, sound, games, media, and multi tasking. The things I still find irratating, are OS install time and reboots during installation, BOOT UP TIME, and untimely updates by microsucks, ever been in the middle of a game and you are finally beating the on slaught of the N. Korean troops in crysis, and you are saying yeah I got those &%$#%%$#@# beat and then your screen goes blank, a blue screen comes up with the sentence on it that reads your computer will reboot in 6 seconds to install updates and then you think back and say so thats why the game seemed slower today and then it hits you NO, NO, NO, I have to do that part all over again.

On the sleep mode, hey there are so many types of PC's and laptops, everyone is different, I may have disabled that mode in my computer when I first built it, etc. etc. etc. I mean I could dabble for hours one end in my BIOS, I have a motherboard book that is about an inch and a half thick on the things you could do with it, but there is one thing I am sure I can depent on with a PC:

1. They crash at least 3 times a night while playing fallout 3.
2. They do updates a the most inconvenient time, I turned auto off.
3. Every time I call that American company called microsucks, I get some person in India and you know they talk funny and probably say the same thing about me but you know I have them beat in being rude, yeah the old smerf still has it when he needs it.
4. You basically have to run micro soft if you want to play the newest games, it seems that the software compainies are just atuned to micro shaft. Hey software companies you ever hear of LINUX, if you started making games for LINUX I bet micro shaft would fall flat on its face, BECAUSE WE ALL HATE MICRO SHAFT and the only reason we use it is to play your stupid games, maybe we should all endorse micro shark an quit buying your stupid games for micro $$jerk.

smerf

[juan_fine]

FYI, PC/AT was at 6/8Mhz.

...and the AT was released the year before the Amiga came out, what's your point?

[juan_fine]

The Great Windows Disk Access Caper:

as an experiment in leanness I turn off file indexing in Windows XP. It takes longer to search for files, but at the same time there are no random disk accesses. I'm still being taxed up to %20 CPU at idle, but this probably a 3rd party app doing that. I shall have a look for it.

I've always disabled the indexing service on the XP machines I've worked with/on, it really drags it down. I mean, if you're spending that much time finding things, you really have personal problems...

[juan_fine]

still, its not as simple as having a ram disk icon and dragging stuff in an out of it right from the time you boot up.

What about Windows?  Never seen or even heard anyone doing it..

google: Results 1 - 10 of about 18,300,000 for windows ram disk
doh

[juan_fine]

what was interesting about this was this:

"The most important difference between a RAM disk and a hard disk is access speed. The time taken for a hard disk to move its magnetic heads over the spinning disks (much like the arm moving over old vinyl record player) is typically measured in milliseconds (thousandths of a second). Whereas a RAM disk does not have mechanical parts and its access speed is typically measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). Access to a RAM disk may be 50 times faster or more than to a hard drive."

So that addresses the "hard drives are fast enough" issue.  Quite simply, they aren't.

secondly, since an argument against executive was that its a third party utility-now freeware but did cost 10 pound. this is a third part utility, and

Thirdly $50!!!!!!  or $100 if you want to use an OS that sees more than 3 gig ram, and if you're gonna use a ram disk in windows you'd want to be able to do that.  Thats more than half the price of of an OEM version of the OS itself..

 Results 1 - 10 of about 10,800,000 for free windows ram disk

[juan_fine]

Believe it or not some software is more efficiently done in real-mode.  You get to take over the system and write software that works almost exactly as you want it (not as good as Amiga) but as close as you can get it.  Win98SE, Win 3.x, DOS, and some others still support real mode.  I still use MS-Word 2.0-- it's fast and loads almost instantly and the OS to use it fits on a floppy drive.

What is this "floppy disk" of which you speak? I don't think I've seen one on a modern computer?

[juan_fine]

Because you live in a world of illusion where bloated applications and inexact OSes rule and overrun by spyware/viruses and require gigabytes of data to keep your OSes functioning.

Great sense of humor you have there, Askii. Have you heard the saying 'if the only tool you have is a hammer evyerthing ooks like a nail"?