PC still playing Amiga catchup

[stefcep2]

You missed the point of my reply. You argued that pc operating systems can't change the scheduler and have it valid after a reboot. I said that makes for a retarded design. You can never be sure of what's hanging around in memory after a reset. That is all.

I argued that the amiga can change the scheduler without a reboot,  but you can switch the Amiga on and off if you like to clear what's in memory, its not as if it takes any longer than a soft reset...wait a minute..thats anther argument isn't it...  Actually i don't think windows can change the scheduler at all, reboot or not.  And Linux needs a different kernel altogether to boot from to change the scheduler.  And who knows what other changes you didn't bargain for might be in that kernel..

[stefcep2]

Only time I've ever had a linux update crap out an install was once when moving from Ubuntu 5.x to 6.x.

I've ended up with a non-booting PCLOS just by installing a SNES emulator from the repo.  A dependency was updated, which KDE needed an update for, which was available but not installed by synaptic.

Which in turn would mean that either all OS's adopt compatability for these drivers, or more likely, windows alone gets drivers. The problem is that at some point the OS has to deal with all these different drivers regardless if they're supplied by CD or on onboard flash, now if you've only got to deal with a tiny handful then a loose collection of files as in the Amiga will almost certainly suffice. But at some point this will become very difficult to manage and maintain. The logical way to do with sorting it all out is a database. Given that many other OS's take this approach, perhaps the registry, far from being a bad idea, may simply have earned a bad reputation from the bad old days of windows 9x...

theres a logical leap here ( non-Windows support aside): why does my PC need to keep a database of thousands of hardware pieces that are not and will not be present on my machine, if each piece of hardware that i can buy comes with it own self installing drivers in flash ROM?

And if a hardware manufacturer wants to support alternative OS's whats stopping them from putting a driver on the same flash rom?  And what's stopping the alternative OS users from reading the Win driver in ROM and reverse engineering it, isn't that what they soemtimes do now anyway?

Nono. To get to the point where I could install 3.5/3.9 I had to get idefix to do it's thing, I then had to go back and edit the script so that it worked reliably. This is before I installed 3.5.

Mind you this was all years and years ago now.

the atapi system was a hack to let cheap IDE interfaces-which were ubiquitous on the PC to recognise IDE-equivalents of peripheral which were available for scsi, because PC's didn't come with scsi interfaces.  IDEFix was a commercial third part utility that attempted to give the same functionality to the IDE interface on the A1200 and A4000.  It was therefore a utility based on a hacked idea.  Its not unexpected that early versions of IDEfix may not have worked 100%. No doubt you knew this.  Its not the Amiga's fault that it didn't comply with what was a hacked PC interface design initially.  IDEFix 97 worked well, and OS 3.5 and OS 3.9 included this functionality as standard.

[stefcep2]

As far as schedulers go, I've never messed with it on linux. Never felt the need, and I've been using linux for dang near 15 years. Never had an issue with it on windows either.

ha ha.  That neatly paraphrases what I've been saying: Pro-Amiga: "Amiga can do x better".  pro-PC: "i don't use or need x, i don't care, it therefore doesn't matter.  PC wins".  Its an argument that can be easily reversed: i dont use cloud computing, i watch DVD's on a DVD player, i don't watch Bluray, i play games on consoles not PC's, so none of these PC features matter.


Well Win 7's scheduler works differently and gives higher priority to user-initiated commands, and Linux offers entire kernels with different schedulers, so clearly schedulers do matter to users out there, if not to yourself.  And it would be a nice if PC gave you a choice, and a simple way of making that choice.  But they don't.

[stefcep2]

From an individual level, what you're saying makes sense. The problem is that Windows hardware support stretches back for nigh on a decade. With each new itteration of hardware bringing more capabilities and additions. It means that you can take your copy of windows XP and install it as easily on a machine first produced in 2000 as you could on a system that is still warm from the production line today. How do you deal with the miriad of hardware variations and mixes (which probably number tens of millions of possibilities) without one?

Fair points.  But what about this: On first installation, all motherboards have a BIOS that detects your OS and gives the OS details of the hardware that actually exists on the motherboard.  The OS then installs the drivers for the motherboard components which exist in flash ROM.  The OS then queries the different interfaces for any added cards eg graphics cards, sound cards, NAND drives that need their own drivers, which each card store in its own flash ROM.  If you buy a printer, scanner, external hard drive, its drivers are in flash ROM as well.  As new cards with new features come about, there is an update to the OS API's eg an update to Direct X, to support these features, and each card must have drivers in flash rom that are compliant with this new API.  HMM this is starting to sound a bit like autoconfig, where devices such as those for scsi cards, accelerators existed in ROM, or installed off floppy into devs/dosdrivers

Depends on the device, but lets take graphics cards as a good example. The drivers for both windows and Linux are more or less the same size. So instead of having, lets say a 30+ meg flash chip and all the electronics that go to support it, you're now up to 60, and then there'll be some versions of linux that'll need it in a different package format and so on and so on. It comes down to two things essentially, at least for the above example: The added cost of designing it into the hardware and fitting it in the way you suggest as well. And the cost of having to supply a miriad of drivers for various OSs. Verses a 1pence CD and leaving the other OS's either to supply vender made drivers via repos or OSS equivalents.

.

Ok so cost is the problem.  But flash is getting cheaper all the time.  Yes supporting Linux would fall by the way side, but its not like hardware manufacturers are falling over themselves to give Linux even a printer driver

[stefcep2]

The "Amiga" can't--a third party product can. Anyone so inclined (and qualified) could write a similar extension for Linux or Windows.

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.

Who knows? You do. You have the source.

How many people in the world really know what all the source code in the Linux kernel does?  And which would you prefer: a GUI driven utility that installs with two clicks, that lets you change your scheduler to suit you preferred usage pattern, or going through the entire source code to make sure your new kernel with the updated scheduler will even let you boot?

[stefcep2]

Hi,

@Karlos,

P poor planning mostly on their part, they tried to copy me by putting on music, trying to format their floppy drive, and then trying to copy files from one hard drive to another while downloading files off the internet at the same time, try it on your PC and see what happens, I know when I try to format a floppy on my machine it sort of clogs up the whole buss lines and renders the computer almost useless. Some things just never change on a PC.

smerf

But Smerf don't you get their standard reply yet:  "they don't use a floppies, so they don't format them, they don't care, it doesn't matter.  PC wins"

[stefcep2]

Oh do grow up.

yeah you are right, it IS a juvenile way to look at it but hell its managed to convince most people here so I thought I'd give it a shot...again.

[stefcep2]

The responses to smerfs tests has been one of curiosity and speculation on possible causes. Nothing like what you're implying.



The only person who is taking this line, parodied or otherwise, is you.

But I've heard it said sooo many times and I swear ot wasn't me saying it.

[stefcep2]

Probably about the same as the number who understand what a scheduler does.

A lot more would know what a scheduler does, considerably less would know what the entire source code of the Linux kernel does.

What, you mean something like this:

Something like it, but it does not change the scheduler itself, but merely gives you one of two choices.  You might call it Scheduler-Lite, you know, the margarine of scheduling GUI's.

You don't need to do that, you select the module you want. Hell, in a large distro like Ubuntu I suspect you could replace the scheduler module from precompiled binaries from the repos if you knew where to look.

firstly do KNOW or merely suspect?  Secondly I doubt it would interest non-coders to dabble with the kernel source code.

[stefcep2]

It is a valid response, tell me how many music tracks you can play while saving a program to an audio cassette on your amiga?

Once hardware has become obsolete, it is no longer on the good side of the catch up game.

Too funnny!!  We now have a "good" and "bad" side of the catch up game.  Floppies are still being made and still being used..on PC's.  Never ever saved any amiga program to an audio cassette ( can it be done)

[stefcep2]

Being able to switch modes was your big "win" for the Executive drop in replacement for the Amiga. You can't replace Exec with Executive and not have the Amiga in question reboot in order to change it.

Err I remember that you need to restart the Executive *server* when changing schedulers, not reboot.  But I already said it doesn't matter either way, as it only takes 5 seconds longer, so who cares really?

It fulfills the requirement of being able to fundamentally change sheduling within the OS without requiring a reboot. Interesting that since I pointed to it you're now trying to dismiss it as something lesser when it clearly matches the original complaint.

Changing the scheduler to one of seven different types is not the same as changing the behaviour of a single scheduler.


rotfl. Re read what you've written there, now compare it to what you're accusing everyone else who disagrees with you of doing.[/QUOTE]

AGAIN.  ANSWER THE QUESTION:  DO DIFFERENT PRECOMPILED SCHEDULER MODULES EXIST AND CAN THEY BY SIMPLY DROPPED INTO THE LINUX KERNEL?  IF SO WOULD THE AVERAGE USER PREFER THIS TO A SIMPLE DOUBLE-CLICK INSTALLATION?

[stefcep2]

AGAIN.  ANSWER THE QUESTION:  DO DIFFERENT PRECOMPILED SCHEDULER MODULES EXIST AND CAN THEY BY SIMPLY DROPPED INTO THE LINUX KERNEL?  IF SO WOULD THE AVERAGE USER PREFER THIS TO A SIMPLE DOUBLE-CLICK INSTALLATION?

Average user doesn't care one way or the other. Average user doesn't even know what a scheduler is.

I see we are back to the "Pro-Amiga: "Amiga can do x better". pro-PC: "i don't use or need x, i don't care, it therefore doesn't matter. PC wins" train of argument agin.

Folks who do care are usually configuring machines to provide services, and a kernel recompile is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than tweaking apache or mysql for optimal performance.

And its even easier to just use a different kernel with a different schedule thats already been compiled for you and is already in the repo there for you.  But thats not the point:  Neither are as easy and configurable and as powerful as just double clicking an icon and selecting your scheduler from a GUI that includes several choices, and allows further configuration options for individual tasks, from the same GUI.  An average AMiga user can do this without ny knowledge of coding or compiling code, and back in the day most of the members of the Amiga group I belonged to did it.  NO PC OS OR THIRD PARTY UTILITY THAT I KNOW OF ALLOWS THIS, NOR HAS ANYONE DEMONSTRATED THATS IT IS AVAILABLE OR EVEN POSSIBLE.

[stefcep2]

This setting changes the length of the quantum assigned to tasks. By default, the applications/programs setting assigns a quantum of 2 ticks to background threads and 6 ticks to threads owned by the foreground process. The background services setting assigns a quantum of 12 ticks to all threads. You can also modify the default and boosted tick counts.

So, Windows doesn't allow you to change the scheduler, but it does allow you to change the behavior of the scheduler.

Linux allows you to change the scheduler, but the different schedulers are sometimes just variations on the same theme, i.e. variable v. fixed quantums.

Both systems implement some form of priority boosting. Windows supports accounting (scheduling metadata) through various add-ons. Linux probably does, too, but I don't know off the top of my head.

But none let you set the priority of individual tasks.  The Windows system decides what is a "program" and what is a "background" task.  You may for example want a higher priority given to a *particular* task in the background, but not to other background tasks.  Windows won't let you do this: any task whose window you haven't made active becomes a background task, and will eventually get lower priority to any task whose window is active, or vice versa depending on if you give more cpu time to "programs" or "background" tasks.

[stefcep2]

It's true that my current system has a multiformat card reader where the floppy might fir but my old AMD duron has a floppy disk drive and I never had any problems using it with either Win2K, WinXP or Linux.

I do fully recognise the "floppy death" syndrome that seems to infect PC's from a decade ago when people were using Win9x. I think it had more to do with the design of Windows than the hardware.

Actually, my work PC also has a floppy drive. Let me mount /dev/floppy and see what it does...

Floppy lock-outs happens on Win XP.  Never tried on my vista laptop.

Yes with Linux, you have to mount it, I just have to stick the floppy in and the amiga knows a about it

Here's another example: try to format a disk, which was probably dodgy.  Win PX kept trying and trying and trying for minutes, locking me out totally.  The amiga would try three times, then give up and tell you it can't do the format, takes a few seconds, at no stage did it lock me out.

[stefcep2]

I feel cheated the floppy has been left behind... Oh wait you can have adf files.

2GB USB flash drive ~$15. Pack of ten floppy disks ~$5. PC floppy drive ~$15

I think that is the definition of obsolete.


Notice: To be taken as directed. Please read the label and consult a Doctor if symptoms persist.

1.  You can buy them.
2.  If you can buy them, the manufacturers are making money on them.
3.  If they are making money on them, people are buying them.
4.  If people are buying them, they are using them.
5.  If people are using them, they are not obsolete.

[stefcep2]

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.

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.