PC still playing Amiga catchup

[Hammer]

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

My laptop's sleep mode shuts down the fan.

[stefcep2]

So you are now calling all Amiga users cardigan-wearing gronks? That wasn't nice of you at all. :rolleyes:

No. ONLY YOU.  And an anal one at that.

ONLY an anal cardigan wearing gronk would:

1.  Embark on a grammatical argument about whether the original post is a question or a statement, as if THAT would make one iota of a difference to what replies are posted.

2. Be incapable of understanding that a statement such as "PC=x86 running on 90-95% of the worlds computers run Windows", would also mean most of the world doesn't use an Amiga computer.

3. Want limit the meaning of "PC" to a discussion about x86 hardware, without admitting that without software, hardware is useless.

4. Want to ignore that 95% of PC hardware runs Windows, and ignore the user-experience of THOSE machines but instead focus his argument solely on the few per cent that don't run Windows.

Only a deluded, anal cardigan-wearing gronk would:

5.  Even contemplate the notion that a PC could run AmigaOS natively because not only is there no PC that can run AmigaOS natively, it has virtually zero probability of eventuating in this universe, or at any time in this universe's existence.

Only a stupid, deluded, anal, cardigan wearing gronk would:

6.  Ask the reasons as to why it is believed that "PC is still playing Amiga catch-up", and then dismiss those reasons because they don't matter to HIM and HIS computer needs, no matter that, for many people, its because of the unique qualities of the Amiga over a PC that they still use Amiga.

7.  Ask the reasons as to why it is believed that "PC is still playing Amiga catch-up". and then re-state the reply into a statement of belief that not only will Amiga be popular again, that it will be more popular than the PC and even put a dollar value on how much that would cost.

8.  Ask the reasons as to why it is believed that "PC is still playing Amiga catch-up" and then re-state the reply into a statement that, not only can Amiga do EVERYTHING that a modern PC can currently do, but that the Amiga can do it ALL better than the PC.

9. Use emerging technologies (CLOUD COMPUTING FFS), which may or may not gain wider acceptance , as an argument against the capabilities of Amiga compared to PC.

[stefcep2]

I don't really think that has anything to do with initalisation though.  With drivers your really are getting back to HD speed and CPU speed. Besides even it took a full second to initalize the card, with the Quad core beast, blazing fast bus speeds, and HD speeds you should be able to initialize just about everything at the same time.

So why might that not happen?  karlos?

[AmigaHeretic]

So why might that not happen?  karlos?

It does happen on 'some' OSes. ;-)  Why not others?  

[amigaksi]

Dude, you've recorded contact bounce (which means that you actually need to sample multiple values, which in turn means you get much longer readings than the ones you discussed earlier).

Wrong.  When you move the joystick, left to right you go into a state of no-press for extremely small amount of time (sub millisecond); that's what you see there.  I only mentioned 1Khz; if you took that into account as relevant you would need much higher than 1Khz.  Your speculation that it's contact bounce is just that -- speculation.

[amigaksi]

Human reaction time is also worth taking into the equation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time

Reaction time from visual stimulus is actially in the 200ms range, which means polling the joystick every 20ms is more than adequate.

You are wrong.  Joystick goes through a lot more states than most games actually use.  It's like audio example I gave.  Your not proving anything by just make a blind assertion that it's switch bounce.  And the blind follow the blind...

[amigaksi]

"Better" is subjective. If a human being cannot access anywhere near the full potential of this port, and the PC offers more then enough overhead that it is still far quicker then a human beings maximum potential reaction time, then seriously... so what?
...

You have missed the point completely.  Amiga joystick is superior REGARDLESS how fast you sample it.  I was stating an example where you need 1Khz sampling.

>I can't run a hard drive or a printer or any other of the miriad of periferals available today off of an amiga's joystick port, but I can run one off of any modern PC's USB port.

We're not comparing which port is faster.  We're comparing which joystick interface is better.  

>And you still haven't shown a single game that actually uses more then a tiny fraction of this supposed superior ports capability.

If you sample at higher rates, you will capture more of the human reaction on the joystick than if you sample at lower rates.

>Untill you can show something that actually benefits by having this lower latency your whole argument is dead in the water.

You need to think about the joystick recorder dump file I posted.  It's not noise as someone as speculated.  But he's mislead others as well-- it's normal for him.

[amigaksi]

PCs aren't perfect but allow a wider range of options and a unmatched degree of customization. Most of the 'defects' you mentioned either depend on software, or are plain silly (there's NO "joystick port" on PCs you can compare the Amiga's ones to. And well, I'd suspect any EHCI controlled USB 2.0 port is quite more reliable and fast than ANY "1 KHz"-polling 9 pin joystick port, and in newest PCs there are a dozen available on the motherboard), while considering the Amiga "still superior" for these really marginal aspects cries for an urgent reality check.

The irony of life, is that in its glorious days, Amiga meant innovation. Now "innovation" is what is keeping the PC platform alive, even if there are cheaper and more reliable solutions for games - like nextgen consoles and so on - and sales are growing only for notebooks and netbooks. And people who once brought the flag of innovation, now prefer to close their eyes and appear as dumb with silly arguments like this 1-KHz fool and the evergreen faster boot-time. If you prefer, I can give you another: the Amiga keyboard had the left Ctrl button where mother IBM decided it should stay. Modern PCs placed it somewhere else: odd. :roflmao:

Go read post #275.  You are doing Chewbacca Defense.  You are trying to confuse people by misrepresenting the actual argument.  You don't have to do 1Khz sampling and still Amiga joystick interface is superior.

[amigaksi]

Gratz!

I guess this means I'm going to have to really put my back in to posting more regularly again!

:laughing:

I think you should first figure out that "better" is NOT subjective before you post.  If it was subjective, you have nothing to argue against except to express your opinion.  Amiga is better than PC in all respects.  Now tell me it's subjective.

[amigaksi]

Make sure to use single copper crystal wires, coated in platinum.

I wonder if amigaksi has ever seen what a button press looks like with an oscilloscope, or has ever had to deal with debouching. Years ago, when I first started playing around with microcontrollers, I had a simple little project I threw together, one of my first. Toggle an LED based on the state change from a pin. I'd press the button and it would randomally decide whether or not it was gonna stay lit. That drove me up the wall but I learned something. Contact switches are full of noise and ring like hell. Polling the crap out of a contact switch or tying one to an interrupt line is a waste of time. You take a sample and you move on. Even if a person could press a button 1,000 times a second, the noise floor would make it impossible to ascertain what really happened. This is one of the many reasons why people typically sample the joystick once per frame. You're not likely to have a legitimate state change in under 50ms. Sampling at higher rates just means you're picking up noise.

*edit* lol, you guys beat me to it!

He was lying (concocting things to confuse people) and you were biased enough to fall for it without any evidence.

[amigaksi]

@amigaski

If you are going to pivot the crux of your argument around precision timing with this degree of anality, then I am forced point out that the argument that all amigas have exactly the same timing, expressed in units of time (as opposed to cycles), is not true. You have not factored manufacturing tolerances of the clock crystals, nor have you factored in nonlinear effects caused by slight differences in temperature and voltage.

No two clock crystals give exactly the same timing, they just aren't that good.

So sorry, you still can't grasp the simple file I wrote and rather opted to be mislead by some speculator who is already known to have mislead people.  When you press the fire button and let go and move the joystick, you can go through a few states of a joystick that require millisecond accuracy.  In fact, it can be less.  Now your bullcrap about two clock crystals not giving exactly the same timing is just that-- a separate argument and just bullcrap since the crystals only need to be as accurate as to produce the timing needed for the system and there are ways to insure they all have consistent timing.  Perhaps, you want to read up on how they actually get Coppers, CIAs, Audio Interrupts, etc. to get the same timing rather than blurting out some blind assertion to mislead people.

[amigaksi]

Yeah... I did some reaction-time tests on a BBC micro when I was about 15 years old. These days they "red-flag" sprinters who respond to the gun in less than 0.1s, because it's counted as jumping the gun - but I was able to *average* about 0.08s, with lots of 0.04-0.06s, and that included making a decision as to which hand to use to press a key in response to a square appearing on either the left or right side of the screen. If you were less than 95% accurate on 100 tests then the whole caboodle was discarded - it assumed you were guessing.

We're talking about states of a joystick not just human reaction time.  As I explained already, joystick can go through multiple states when person hits it and presses/releases fire button.  When you sample at 60Hz or less, you are approximating.

[DamageX]

Is this thread still going on?

While it's true that the method of polling the old DB15 joystick port is suboptimal, and that USB is also a bit convoluted and known to introduce lag, luckily PCs have (had?) a perfectly adequate port for this purpose: the parallel port. A wide variety of devices are supported by this win driver http://www.geocities.com/deonvdw/Docs/PPJoyMain.htm and I remember some DOS-based emulators also including support (for instance ZSNES could use parallel port SNES pads)

[paolone]

Go read post #275.  You are doing Chewbacca Defense.  You are trying to confuse people by misrepresenting the actual argument.  You don't have to do 1Khz sampling and still Amiga joystick interface is superior.

Yes, but the issue here is: "who cares?".

Maybe you're the only one all over the world. Doesn't this suggest anything to you?

[Karlos]

I don't really think that has anything to do with initalisation though.  With drivers your really are getting back to HD speed and CPU speed. Besides even it took a full second to initalize the card, with the Quad core beast, blazing fast bus speeds, and HD speeds you should be able to initialize just about everything at the same time.  Aside from the fact that many people, as some have pointed our here, this is possible.   Something QNX or Amithlon, take seconds to boot and you can access the internet, hear sound, see the desktop.

Compare the size of your ultra fast boot time OS and the functionality they give to those that boot more slowly on the same hardware.

Neither Amithlon or QNX support anything beyond the basic framebuffer of my card (and probably not even that). So, whilst they can boot in a fraction of the time, they don't offer the same functionality. No 3D, no physics acceleration, no GPGPU support, no video decoding.

If I only use the most basic supported drivers for all my hardware I can reduce the boot time quite considerably. However, I didn't pay good money to buy hardware I can't use properly.  A card with ~960GFLOPS number crunching capability is no better than an old Cirrus Logic if all your OS/divers grant you is a few MB of framebuffer.

The argument about the quad core being able to initialise everything is neither here nor there. Aside from starting services, booting up is pretty much a single threaded operation, one that is dominated by waiting for hardware and disk IO. Disk intensive (many seeks and small transfers) operations are slow on any OS, AmigaOS included.

If you are going to assert that slow boot times must be down to something else, then you need to explain why my A1XE doesn't boot dozens of times faster than my least classic machines do. It has much faster hardware and is pretty much doing the same jobs in the same way as OS3.9 did them during boot time.

[Karlos]

So sorry, you still can't grasp the simple file I wrote and rather opted to be mislead by some speculator who is already known to have mislead people.  When you press the fire button and let go and move the joystick, you can go through a few states of a joystick that require millisecond accuracy.  In fact, it can be less.  Now your bullcrap about two clock crystals not giving exactly the same timing is just that-- a separate argument and just bullcrap since the crystals only need to be as accurate as to produce the timing needed for the system and there are ways to insure they all have consistent timing.  Perhaps, you want to read up on how they actually get Coppers, CIAs, Audio Interrupts, etc. to get the same timing rather than blurting out some blind assertion to mislead people.

Temper, temper. Just mirroring your pedantry. Struck a nerve, did it?