OS 4.0 Requirements

[mikeymike]

I've heard 32MB as well.  I wonder what that actually equates to in reality though... I mean, look at MS's OS minimum memory requirements... Win95 on 4MB RAM?  

If OS4 is 32MB absolutely required, then it's not that different to WinNTx :-)

[mikeymike]

Win 95 was not an OS but a GUI for DOS.

Oh god... don't start this argument again.  Needless to say I disagree strongly, as MS-DOS provided very little backbone for Win95.  And anyone who raises the "yeah but you can still get a command prompt up for WinNTx, which means it runs on top of MS-DOS!" Cringely DOH-quote will get a slap.

All of that aside, what has Win95 being 'officially declared an OS by all parties' got to do with what I said?

No 'modern' OS that would perfom efficiently with Just 4MB of RAM.

Even if it were true, what's that got to do with the price of fish?

[mikeymike]

I don't know much about the price of fish but the statement that "OS/4 is not that much different than NT"

Pardon?  When did I say or even imply that?

Having similar minimum memory requirements does not mean that the memory handling and performance will be the same.

No, but an explanation for the requirement, what kind of requirement it is would be useful.  eg.  Is 32MB only just enough to boot OS4 and do nothing else, like have TCP/IP configured and running.

[mikeymike]

I think you should have 128MB or at least 64MB. 32MB is not enough IMO.

Don't you think that depends on what you're going to use the computer for?  Some Amiga user may absolutely require 2GB RAM in their A1 but that doesn't have any effect on recommending an amount for someone who is going to fire up a text editor from time to time.

And until Hyperion throws in an explanation of what the requirement actually means, saying "128MB or at least 64MB" is pretty much just wetting your finger and seeing which way the wind is blowing.

32MB could work if you have fast HD for swapping!

For all we know 32MB might be the minimum requirement so that the OS doesn't swap all the time and therefore suck performancewise.

[mikeymike]

Can you even BUY less than 128MB sticks nowadays?

What's that got to do with anything?  I for one would like to know what the 32MB requirement actually means, because if I wanted to keep my costs low and buy "only" 128MB, then I'd want to know that I had enough slack with that memory to do what I wanted to do effectively/fast enough.

[mikeymike]

AFAIK there wasn't a software limit in previous versions of AmigaOS, just that it would complain about lack of memory when trying to start a program that asked for more memory than was available.  I don't see why that should change with OS4, but then I'm not a programmer.

[mikeymike]

OS3x can run on less than 2MB RAM, but has about 1% of the featureset that OS4 does!

[mikeymike]

@ Atheist

You couldn't imagine just how much I hate windows...anyhow, the ram needed for your 1600x1200x32bit colour screen should be zero. But pc architecture DOESN'T work. How can I say this? I seem to recall that my Ti4600 video card has 128 megs of ram; period! Why doesn't that ram actually DO something?

Erm, video RAM is used for display drawing... what evidence were you relying on to say that it wasn't?

And 3D games would really suck performancewise if they couldn't use video RAM :-)

The only thing I can think of that you might be seeing is that on Windows, if you have a wallpaper, that is stored in explorer.exe's memory space.

AmigaOne! Get AOS4.0, then SHOW OFF!!!!
P.S. You know, it's funny how just by using AOS4.0 will be showing off....i.e. the fact that it works, while windows doesn't!!!!

For an atheist, you sure don't talk like one :-D

[mikeymike]

@ olegil

I'll tell you what - you design a graphics card that runs at the same bus speed as the FSB (so it can talk at a fast enough speed to talk to main memory without a performance hit), which can be quite a few different values >FSB100, then maybe mobo manufacturers can talk about completely redesigning how 99% of computers are designed today.  Not just PCs, but the Pegasos, A1, and Mac range.  Then we'll bring in the obscene chip/fast legacy rubbish again.  It was good for once upon a time, not anymore.

And purely setting an obscenely high resolution/colour depth on Windows does not drain system memory.

[mikeymike]

My point is this, if I have 128 megs of ram on the video card, and at least 512k on my audigy card, why couldn't the OS work in 4 megs?

You want Windows to run out of video memory and sound card memory, regardless of what it is doing?

AmigaOne! The elegant OS!

AmigaOne isn't an OS.

[mikeymike]

? How would it run out of video memory?

Apologies, ambiguous wording.  I meant, Windows use video memory rather than system memory.

AOS4.0, The elegant OS!

How would you know, it's not even out yet.

[mikeymike]

128,000,000 bytes of ram on the card.
1600 x 1200 = 1,920,000 pixels x 4 bytes for 32 bit colour = 7,680,000 bytes

Yes, and the graphics card uses that memory as it was designed to.  Windows asks it to draw a screen with said specifications and details, it draws the image into graphics memory and displays it on the VDU.

AmigaOne! AO4.0, in developement!
(That's accurate?)

You spelt development wrong :-)