Amiga Multitask

[spirantho]

Yes it was Windows ME i was thinking of. Everybody was looking forward to the new Millenium Edition. But it did not quite live up to the expectations

Quite the contrary... my expectation was that it would be dreadful. I wasn't disappointed
2000 was the first Windows that was properly usable to me, and I used it as long as I could before being forced onto xp.

Luckily I always had my Miggy to keep me sane, though!

[Digiman]

Well it is possible to add 8mb to any OCS Amiga giving 8.5mb total back in the 80s, your average PC in those days was 4mb MAX. So given the file sizes even of VGA/HAM pictures an extra 8mb over chip ram is A LOT. Hard drives were only like 20 or 40mb ram to put it in perspective for top end machines.

As for the 6510 based C64 doing multitasking, yeh sure and a Sinclair C5 has 4 wheels so is as good as driving to the shops in a real car lol. With a relocatable zero page only the 6509 based Tandy 8bits can multitask effectively, other than that the only reasonable method is SymbOS for the Z80 based MSX2 or Amstrad CPC 8 bit computers (Z80 has ability to move zero page)#

Virtual memory was sort of a good idea when 24bit images first appeared on 286/386 machines with 4mb but today the legacy is hurting Windows, the system is designed around it even though you could build a 64gb PC. It is soo deep down in the code that switching it off even if you don't need it (why would you need it with 64GB of RAM) actually impacts Windows performance IME.

And I hope we all know that around the time of Kickstart 2.0 that Commodore and IBM shared information, they got exclusive access to how Kickstart/Workbench works and we got AREXX (IBMs REXX for Amiga) so OS/2 improved quite a bit before Windows 95 as was easily the most efficient multitasking OS on PC. It even done a better job of playing DOS games than MS-DOS through it's virtual DOS sessions with 640kb RAM assigned to them with nothing lost for the usual drivers you had to load.

Also people always say Win2000 is better than XP but unless you only had 64mb (a paltry amount in 2002 when XP was in use) it booted faster and thrashed the disk a lot less than 2000 on all the 100s of laptops I tried it on over the decade of sales of computers and laptops I managed. Don't ask me why. Maybe 32mb or 64mb limited machines are better but XP Professional had no other disadvantage on SP1. XP SP1 is REALLY fast actually, but you are stopped from installing things like Chrome browser etc (but not Firefox though).

[Thorham]

As for the 6510 based C64 doing multitasking, yeh sure and a Sinclair C5 has 4 wheels so is as good as driving to the shops in a real car lol.

You say it as if it would be utterly useless, which with extra memory it obviously wouldn't be.

[commodorejohn]

Also people always say Win2000 is better than XP but unless you only had 64mb (a paltry amount in 2002 when XP was in use) it booted faster and thrashed the disk a lot less than 2000 on all the 100s of laptops I tried it on over the decade of sales of computers and laptops I managed. Don't ask me why.

I've been using Win2K on a 1GB Pentium III laptop for several months now, and it doesn't thrash the disk in the slightest. I could probably even turn off paging entirely, come think...

[koaftder]

Also people always say Win2000 is better than XP but unless you only had 64mb (a paltry amount in 2002 when XP was in use) it booted faster and thrashed the disk a lot less than 2000 on all the 100s of laptops I tried it on over the decade of sales of computers and laptops I managed. Don't ask me why.

XP was a lot more aggressive with the disc cache than 2k was along with a whole slew of other improvements. I never understood why so many folks clung to 2k.

[whabang]

Win2k had much less graphical mumbo-jumbo - and yes, back in the K6-3 era this actually made a huge difference.

[koaftder]

Win2k had much less graphical mumbo-jumbo - and yes, back in the K6-3 era this actually made a huge difference.

I never noticed a lick of difference in graphics performance moving away from 2K, certainly noticed the increased reliability though. Had a k6/2 400 with a sis 6326 w/ 8 meg ram and there wasn't a damn bit of difference in graphical performance even with XP's ugly ass fisher price window dressing. I think people make this stuff up or suffer from memory problems.

Please define this "mumbo jumbo" you speak of bogging down k63 boxen back in the day. Hell, XP even runs fine with PCI matrox cards. If your box was a slow poke, it wasn't because of the graphics.

[KimmoK]

@commodorejohn
"turn off paging entirely, come think... "

Good luck with that. Last time I had windows installed, there was no way to disable paging file. Even if you disable it from the system tool, paging file appears after anyway and swapping happens.
(+M$ applications do their own swapping, at least word does it with large documents, no matter if you have terabyte of RAM.)


@koaftder
" I never understood why so many folks clung to 2k"
Because not all apps run on XP?
Or because XP does not run on their HW?
Those things happen.

[KimmoK]

Since the OS didn't allow to share lots of resources (sound access was exclusive for example), it also limits what can be done using multitasking. No way to run two apps accessing paula for example...

On my a4k I have been using AHI about as long as I remember, to get 14bit calibrated audio (up to 56khz or something). With that setup you can run as many AHI aware audio applications at the same time without problems.

But sure, very old apps that bang the HW directly can crash or lock up.

Also, on Amiga it has been pretty simple to use 4...7 audio cards at the same time without problems. Doubt any 486 did that... ;-)

[KimmoK]

It wasn't more usable because of the pre-emptive multitasking though. Especially when running code that did Forbid() or Disable(), which because of the OS design pretty much every program had to.

I think I have never seen any symptoms of that. AOS multitasking has always been smoother than on any other OS I've used.

(I'm sure HW drivers used that, but also file handling was smoothest on Amiga, and web browsing over ethernet.)

For example, IIRC, when I ran 16bit SW in while(1) loop on win95 it pretty much locked up (IIRC, not absolutely sure because at work we used 3.11 and I might mix up something), and it was supposed be pre-emptively multitasking... hmmm.... I should have the demo SW somewhere.... should try again in qemu.

[KimmoK]

Playing games alongside the bbs?. What kind of games? S****y games like minesweeper doesn't count as a game. Or were you able to play shadow of the beast while running the bbs all in the same Amiga?.

RailRoadTycoon, Civilization, Colonization, OilImperium(IIRC), Foundation, MAME and other  games under emulation, etc...
Hundred(s) of games I believe. Pretty much every HDD installable game.

[psxphill]

@koaftder
" I never understood why so many folks clung to 2k"
Because not all apps run on XP?
Or because XP does not run on their HW?
Those things happen.

I have a machine still on 2000 because the upgrade cost wasn't worth it. It sits there running the same software that it has for the last decade. It's annoyingly slow, but it always has been.
 
I wouldn't run anything older than windows 7 on a machine I have to use daily. I've already started the transition to windows 8.

[runequester]

A friend of mine still uses windows 2000. It's starting to become an issue running any newer games, which limited our ability to do some multiplayer gaming. (mostly indie titles since I was on linux at the time)

[MiAmigo]

I have a sizable home network (over 20 machines and notebooks) of various ages. On each one, I run an OS comparable to that machine's age, anything from Windows 98SE and DOS (on one machine, for old games) to Windows 7. I ran W2K for a long time until I discovered Windows FLP. XP is still running on a number of my machines and its generally rock-solid, insofar as dependability goes.