PC still playing Amiga catchup

[DonnyEMU]

I have stayed out of this topic, but I agree with Karlos quite a bit on what he's been saying. There are a lot of modern pitfalls in both PCs and Mac that don't exist with Amigas, but honestly if I had to say it my PC today lets me do 1000 times more (and when you boot up actually doing 1000 more things in the background that you don't know about)  and working faster in realtime than I could ever do on Classic Amiga hardware and still quite a bit on newer A1 technology.

The problem befalling the newer Amiga hardware is that it's based on older hardware bus standards and the support for things like GPUs and shaders and 3D is still not quite where it needs to be.

Part of the issue is access to the technologies. Most newer Amiga development for GPU has been dependent on information that is available via the "open source" community and firms who don't like to work with them providing information so things like drivers and APIs could be written..

For instance, I haven't used a Radeon 7000 series card in a number of years on a PC. Today everything has went PCI Express.. There are two types of PCI Express cards one with a smaller connector for most major peripherals with all the speed of current USB standards for internal cards. When people think PCI-E here they mainly think new graphics card with one of the smaller connectors and a larger connector attached.

Regular PCI bus is dead and considered legacy in current PCs just like ISA was on AT bus machines..

USB standards are a changing too. Wireless USB is on the horizon which means no more cords for everyone..  By the end of the year a 256 core PC that will be affordable to home/business users is SLATED for release..

My current laptop has 6 gigabytes of RAM , a 500GB internal hard drive and a dual core CPU with 64-bit instruction set and hardware virtualization built-in..

I run Windows 7 with Virtual XP in the background it takes up 256MB to 512MBs and I don't even know it's running. The old 32 bit apps can be run in a virtual screen or integrated along with the Windows 7 apps. I usually install things in Windows 7 versus Virtual XP because the apps run better and faster, whereas Virtual XP is there just for older apps that misbehave or are 16bit applications (I still have two old animation programs from that time period that I love. One is from Jim Kent, who wrote many Amiga animation programs).

Along side that, I run Linux (ubuntu) in a virtual machine on it's own full screen right along side the XP virtual machine, and I have AROS x86 and WinUAE running as well. It's the best of both worlds for me..

For a living I do WPF, and Silverlight applications (yes silverlight apps now run in and out of the web browser and work on PCs, Intel Macs, and soon should run on Linux) and web applications..

The reality of all of this is on this one machine I can run everything and it doesn't matter the cpu, the OS whatever. It just all runs. The machine is a 2.4 GHz CPU so it plays blu-ray DVDs as well.

Do I have viruses and issues, I really haven't, nor have I had viruses since I installed the Vista OS.. Of course I went completely 64-bit and I don't surf to porn site and filesharing sites to download software that I don't own or try to pirate things. There is a lesson to be learned here. I used an alternative virus checker not Norton/Symantec or McAffee. I use something called Avast that is made in Europe. Why these guys are ontop of their game, and they see most of the malware that is written. Most people writing viruses and malware immediately attempt to disable the top two programs that are sold out there. I have no worries with Avast (avast.com)..

My first virus ever was a boot block one and it happened on an Amiga. I have also found viruses on Mac OSX. Why don't we see them on linux, well that's the favored OS of most of the virus/malware writers..

Everytime my PC boots I am running background services (called deamons by some other OSes), like a web server and a SQL server. I honestly don't even notice they are there..

The people who complain the loudest about the PC are usually fanboys of other platforms who are "religious" about their OS experience, and people who have gaps in knowledge about their OS and how to get help not to have issues.. There are user groups and places they could go to learn. Most of them don't because they don't have time and just want to get things done.  The only computer I was ever religious about was the classic Amiga, but PCs improved and I was part of the folks who marched that platform forward.

I still have a soft spot for the Amiga, but could never find a newer AmigaOne in stock anywhere to buy one or find the hardware to upgrade my four classic Amigas to run the Power PC version of the OS here where I live..

I think Hyperion has done a great job with AmigaOS, but they only have so much access to info and technology that has stayed proprietary to them. The Amiga OS needs to undergo fundamental change to get further along..

Things needed:

Better full gpu support and drivers and hardware support for PCI-E and USB standards. I think Displayport will have a difficult time catching on because HDMI is so popular with TVs..

full multi-user support..

More sound support

Support for multiple cores

the Move to 64-bit CPUs running as a 64 bit OS

Better WIFI support..

Who's CPU it is really doesn't matter anymore, they are fast enough to do anything now.. Intel would keep them riding the curve as new things come out, but in the abscence of that support for newer bus standards and virtualization technologies.

I wish AmigaOS and the platform would move forward but no one seems to think the R&D investment is worth it..

-Don

[DonnyEMU]

Several things about PC booting with Windows that you folks are probably not aware of:


If you want to see what's taking so long on your PC boot up all you have to do is go down to the RUN Menu and type:

MSCONFIG

Click on the startup tab, all the boxes that are checked on your list are things that run when you start up the pc, if you remove those (most of which Amiga doesn't have available) your PC will boot much much faster though you need to be careful with what you turn off..

There is also a services tab.. Everything there runs in the background and takes up memory unchecking the boxes there will remove these items from startup.


Also there is something called superfetch that runs on startup.. Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP–based PCs.

When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks—including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans—run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP–based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.

SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.

You can disable this also using Tweak VI from TotalIdea Software

http://www.totalidea.com/product.php

I have to say that most of the people who think Windows starts up slowly just aren't aware of just how much work and what the PC is doing for you that doesn't happen on the Amiga when you start up. Yes it starts up quickly, but the Amiga doesn't enhance your experience in the same way..  Though I know a lot of guys who put a LOT of things in their startup-sequences..

If you turned off everything cached and in startup, the PC would boot just as fast as an Amiga, but would you really want that experience considering what it's doing for you??

[DonnyEMU]

When the Amiga catches up to multi-touch PCs and THIS on the XBOX-360, then I'll know it has a future..

Introducing Project Natal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_txF7iETX0&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxU_T7C4Ils&feature=player_embedded

This is no joke, I saw this functional over a year ago..

[DonnyEMU]

I can't wait until Project Natal hits the PC environment not just the x-box. Things like minority report's interface will be available with your built in laptop webcam.. Not that I heard it's happening but it makes sense that it would be..

As far as turning PCs off I never do it. Most hardware folks tell you not to, as it shocks the power supplies. It's better to hibernate or SLEEP. And I haven't lost a file to this or any context or blue screeen since Windows XP which I stopped using around 2004-2005.. I like UBUNTU it's low memory and hardware requirements make it a nice second virtual machine to have around too..

[DonnyEMU]

Probably what they are calling GPU acceleration is PIXEL SHADER technology that's actually being done through software emulation thru the CPU not the real GPU.. I'd call Adobe about this and ask them exactly what it means..

"Of course, none of this explains why Photoshop CS4 64-bit has such a hard time moving the cursor when GPU acceleration is enabled. WTF? ;-) Something silly on my end, I'm sure.

EDIT: Just to be clear: "real-time" does not mean instantaneous.[/QUOTE]"

[DonnyEMU]

It's obvious that people who are responding here about "Games for Windows" here have never done any real DirectX, Managed DirectX, Or XNA Game Studio programming at all and they are just talking out of their proverbial hats.. If you want to talk about support for more than just game controllers and want to add Windows Live and Xbox live including multiplayer over network (IP), and voice and instant messaging  and headset communication, not to mention the upcoming facial recognition and other technologies..

I suggest you visit the following URLs:

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/AboutGFW/Pages/DirectX10.aspx

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/

I don't think about programming a pots unit anymore, please that's done all for me in a standardized kind of way.. I think more about creating a game for the PC and deploying it on the X-box 360 and Zune (all of which cross port via the free XNA game studio 3.0).. And if you look at creators.xna.com there are all sorts of nice 3d and 2d multi-scroller games with (some are free), or I can program my own and sell it directly on X-box live and they are as good as any Amiga game I had back in the day..

Check out catalog.xna.com and get back with me about this discussion..

[DonnyEMU]

Simply put when the Amiga is running a CPU that is capable of decoding a 1080p Blu-Ray DVD and doing something else at the same time, then I'll believe that it's as fast as a pc or faster. legacy bus and ports which are designed to handle specific speeds and timer resolutions don't tell the tale, neither does the Front Side Bus  or North Bridge or Southbridge specs on a particular unit. Most SATA controllers today don't live up to the transfer speeds (even at burst rates) that are in their "general specification" due to other hardware factors.

Wait until we see wireless USB.. That will no doubt be an interesting discussion here. I can't belive we are having a timing resolution discussion here outside of the 1980s.. as they say "Only Amiga Makes it Possible!!"