PC still playing Amiga catchup

[Roondar]

Don't get me wrong folks, I'm delusional that a thread on this site can still pull 1000+ responses in a short time.  I just wish it was all threads..  Then we might actually be able to say that the Amiga isn't dead after all..

:laughing:

Well, my Amiga's don't appear to be quite dead yet.

The platform?
There is that saying about horses....

[Trev]

And taxes....

[koaftder]

Perhaps this thread could be the beginning of a new coffee house section, well actually given the delusional nature of these postings maybe it should be called the crack house section.

Did somebody say crack!? Oh goodie!

[ElPolloDiabl]

Did somebody say crack!? Oh goodie!

It's Rainbow Boing Crack._:confused:_lol

Disclaimer:
Although cocaine is found in nature so are poisonous fungi, radioactive uranium and inedible brussel sprouts. Seriously, don't try this at home kids.

[Trev]

If you do an IN AL,DX and then switch contexts the stack will save (EAX,EDX) at least which are related to the IN instruction thus no parallel instruction can execute until this one finishes.  I am just speaking of context switching on the same processor.  You have to wait for IN to finish to use the joystick data or whatever other device you are doing IN from.

What's not clear to me after reading Intel's manuals is whether or not IN/INS/OUT/OUTS assert LOCK# (they don't appear to do so explicitly), or if it's the responsiblity of the system designer to manage locking in a multiprocessor environment based on the state of M/IO#. The documentation implies that IN/INS/OUT/OUTS should be atomic at the processor level, which I assume means the package itself, multiple cores inclusive. I'm obviously fuzzy on the details.

Memory mapped I/O appears to play by the same rules associated with all other memory accesses, i.e. atomicity is either implied by the instruction, explicitly requested via the LOCK prefix for compatible instructions, or managed by the programmer via higher level methods.

Anyway, if you have one task polling I/O and another task processing the data, you obviously have to coordinate between the two. On a modern system, if you haven't explicitly set the affinity of the task, you have to assume the tasks may run simultaneously on separate processors. Unnecessarily stalling one processor while it waits for another would be indicative of a bad design.

[warpdesign]

That was already refuted a few times. Even if you don't need the high rate to read the joystick, you spend LESS CPU TIME if your joystick is faster.

Do you really think the CPU TIME used to poll the joystick in any recent PC is even high enough to be mesured ??

Come on: it's 2009. PC won (even Apple use PC based hardware), Apple has a multitasking OS, and Sun has been bought by Oracle... Hello !

[Karlos]

Or simply "The Delusional in the Amiga crowd versus reality 101".

How about "comp.sys.amiga.advocacy rides again!" ?

Color me amazed that vBulletin seems to be readily handling 1 thread with over a thousand replies.  Xoops would have croaked by now.

Also... LOVE the tags for the thread...

Another vBulletin forum I visit has a thread that's well over 1000 pages by now and it handles it just fine

[Wayne]

I don't mind so much, the current status of the Amiga.  It is what it is, which is to say a niche machine that's still fun to play with, and reminds us of a simpler time.  Hell, I'd tinker with C64's if I had them.

What really gets to me on the pet peeve level is that in 2009, a full 15 years after the death of Commodore, there are still those so desperate to hang on to "what used to be", that they invent the smallest, most asinine reasons that they believe the Commodore Amiga -- a computer almost 8 times removed from Moore's Law -- is still a commercially competitive (not to even mention viable) platform...

While it's fun to debate these small niglets of factual stupidity, the Amiga is a "was" machine now, and I think we'd all be much happier -- if not less entertained -- if everyone could just come to grips with that and enjoy it for what it is. Not what it was.  Not what it "could have been".  

A hobby machine.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Now shut up, plug in your Pro Joystick and play F-18 Interceptor until your fingers bleed.  I command it!

[Karlos]

What really gets to me on the pet peeve level is that in 2009, a full 15 years after the death of Commodore, there are still those so desperate to hang on to "what used to be", that they invent the smallest, most asinine reasons that they believe the Commodore Amiga -- a computer almost 8 times removed from Moore's Law -- is still a commercially competitive (not to even mention viable) platform...

I find it doubly bizarre that those who regard it in that light are usually quite dismissive of things like UAE that can actually transform an OS3.x installation into a platform that can actually hold it's own thanks to the exponential increase in raw horsepower you get from it.

[Karlos]

Did somebody say crack!? Oh goodie!

OMG, it's 420Dude :lol:

[Fester]

I'm betting a bucket of broccoli that this type of comparison discussion will fever on into the next decade.

[Trev]

Now shut up, plug in your Pro Joystick and play F-18 Interceptor until your fingers bleed.  I command it!

All my 80's era digital joysticks are broken. :-( Actually, my Nintendo and Sega gamepads all work fine. It's just the Atari-style ones that don't work. You know what I'd really like to do? Transfer my SB Live! and Voodoo 3 to a PC, install MS-DOS and Wing Commander: Prophecy, hook up my Sidewinder stick, and re-live some awesome 90's-style Glide effects. Loved the rings on the explosions. (I originally played it on two SLI'd Voodoo 2 cards. Not sure if the experience would be the same on a Voodoo 3.)

EDIT: Mini rant: Selling Origin to EA was the worst thing that could have happend to Ultima and Wing Commander. Why oh why did this sale take place? Maybe we'll see a new Wing Commander (or even an epic remake) someday. If Apple buys EA, though, who knows what will happen. Also, I liked Ultima VIII and Ultima IX and was very disappointed when Ultima X was cancelled.

[Trev]

I'm betting a bucket of broccoli that this type of comparison discussion will fever on into the next decade.

That's OK. It keeps people coming back and clicking Wayne's advertisements. But wait. Where are the advertisements? It mostly just cycled between AmigaKit and Elbox, but....

[Fester]

Very true. I keep reading these myself. :-)

[ElPolloDiabl]

I'm back on Blitz Basic myself, coding like a maniac. Lots of fun.

[Wayne]

Did somebody say crack!? Oh goodie!

Now all we need is for someone to get mad, call the other person a Nazi and our lives will be complete..

Wayne