Sorta OT: Win 7 64

Isn't that Google Chrome? :-)

GEOS back in the late '80s was pretty comparable to Windows 3 or thereabouts, all in 64kB:

---Joel

But I don't want to reconstruct it, I just want to use it. DOSBox makes you keep copies of stuff, which is a horrible kluge.

And did I mention it's as slow as molasses in January?

Cheers

Phil Hobbz

No, it DOES NOT!

When you start it up, YOU mount the directories you wish to use, and they can be the same as they are from a DOS prompt. There are NO copies of anything, if the operator sets it up right. That is what start-up scripts are for.

It would run ANY app made for DOS just as fast as it ran on the box it was made to run under.

Being slow by comparison to what you are currently used to does not even relate.

Yeah, I know all about that.

From what I can tell the edit-compile-download cycle cannot run on one machine with DOSBox (Using Ultraedit, say, as an IDE), No way (AFAIK) to automate the tool interactions. I'd be happy to be wrong about this. Isn't there some way to encapsulate a 16-bit DOS console application so it runs from the Win7 64 command line? It would have to accept command line parameters, ouptut on stdout and allow file operations (serial communication would be good too).

VMWare Workstation with XP Pro installed will allow all the tools to be installed to at least work reasonably efficiently with the old apps. It's pretty slick, and fires up reasonably fast, much better than dual-boot in many ways. Seems inefficient to have things installed multiple times.

This machine happened to come with 64-bit Windows 7 of the highest level that makes sense (Premium) pre-installed, but I'm also evaluating whether I can stand having this on a new kick-a** i7 LGA1366 triple-channel machine. More RAM than the 3.x G maximum under XP is desirable (at least 12G would be good, 24G is still way too expensive) so I'm thinking 64-bit Win7 (I know 64-bit Vista works well for Solidworks and Solid Edge), and I think we have Altium running on one such machine, but wither the olde stuff... either multiple physical machines or multiple virtual machines seem to be the only way.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

The point being that it shouldn't be necessary. It would be nice if it were as easy to use as DOS, for instance.

Wow! So I can use my multi-GHz multicore CPU with gigabytes of memory and it'll be as fast as an 80286! Cool!

To you, maybe. Under OS/2 and even XP, old DOS apps *fly*. I like that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Are you running with the default CPU cycles? IIRC, it defaults to around

Protected mode programs all run at full power (~100% CPU), which is probably Pentium range.

Mounting is easy, just run it with the current directory as an argument. Set up a shortcut and configure it to do everything you need to start with in one click.

I don't know what you're whining about directories for, it's your own fault if you screwed up your directories. They have the same damn path in Windows.

Tim

of

Now, now, now...do not give them any ideas for naming the _next_ OS...

On a sunny day (Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:47:00 -0800) it happened "Joel Koltner" wrote in :

Well, Chrome is one way t odo that, but somehow I think people will like t orun and own application software on their own OPC. that is also why I tin 'cloud' computin gis silly. I would not trust my data to be scattered all over the world. For customers yo ucannot even do that. It is great for espionage, CIA orwhatever can know and control everthing.

That is nice, I never had a Commodore 64. I learned BASIC on a Commodore PET at work... Then for myself I bought a Sinclair ZX80, and some ZX81s, thode had a good BASIC. Then I modified it ,added floppy controller, EPROM programmer, sound, real CRT, the works, and wrote a CP/M clone so I could run C/80 (C compiler on it at home). Added an IBM keybord to it. I also did a multitasking window system for it, but the 64 kB was full then... No more space for applications. Moved to a real PC. Amazing they did that GEOS GUI in so little memory.

On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:14:27 +0000) it happened Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote in :

with hardware.

Yes, games, did not think about that, and 3D games too. Problem with multi cores is that after 5 or 6 it becomes very hard to get more speed, Intel cancelled Larrabee, maybe they figured that out. Yes, more powerful graphics ships. It seems now that Cell is also dead, rumour goes that Sony will use a more general architecture, perhaps based on PPC (still IBM) for the PS4. Cell had 6 or 8 cores (cannot remember), so if the CPU has 8 cores .. no more Cell. What do you get?

of

Oh, the workstation runs Vista64 with a copy of VMWare for all the old apps. In fact I am posting this from an XP virtual machine. An i7 extreme with 12GB of RAM and a 4TB striped/mirrored array can run a lot of stuff really fast.

BUT, the test bench has to run a lot of different apps, supporting a lot of old hardware, and a lot of it doesn't come with signed drivers and that would kill an install under 64 bit Vista or Win 7.

I did try running Vista64 with VMWare on the test bench, it worked, but I get the same results from just running Win7 32 bit and not worrying about it TODAY, and that is the bottom line. I need to get work done NOW. I'll deal with the future as it arrives.

Jim

Actually, Windows 7 allows for the installation of an app while telling the OS to ignore the unsigned drivers.

I am surprised that you did not know that fact.

Then again, with all the "M$" hater type gang boy retard mentality twits in here, I guess it shouldn't surprise me.

drivers with hardware.

speed,

general architecture,

Cell.

application,

many

I started my career in parallel processing and even then (1970s) it was well known that tightly coupled MIMD systems did not scale beyond 32 max.

I think video editing is something that could benefit from multiple cores, but the s/w will have to be a bit more complex.

computing.

logic to

Thing is, most applications that need vast computing power tend to be SIMD that can be spread across multiple cores quite easily.

brain so you

Voice recognition and language translation will be the next big app that requires massive power. Right now though the s/w is still not quite up to it.

away,

work you will do,

NOT the 64 bit version, ALL driver must be signed, UNLESS you toggle a little known boot time option. Then it will ask if you want to ignore, but the default is to NOT give that option. I think it must be enabled on a boot by boot basis too. I would rather just load the 32 bit, since the apps are all 32bit anyway, and there is only 4GB or RAM installed. But, then again, you obviously know much more about what my computing requirements are than I do. You must love USENET, it forces people to see your BS, gives you interaction that is lacking in your real life, at least until they add you to their killfile.

By bye

Agreed, people like you and I certainly will.

To some extent there already is cloud computing, it's just that companies maintain their own infrastructure internally rather than just renting generic servers and Internet bandwidth from Google or whomever. Indeed, I know several people who work from home and they're just "remote desktopping" into a server at their employer's central location, and you see a lot of banks and stores using the same model.

AES-256 is our friend?

Your exploits with a ZX81 sound quite impressive. I remember visiting the annual engineering expo at the local university as a kid in high school and being quite intrigued by how many ZX81s, VIC 20s, and even a few Commodore 64s had been majorly hacked up to make more general-purpose hardware controllers. (The guys who were flush enough to buy or otherwise had access to Apple IIs generally managed to obtain commercial I/O cards, I guess... :-) ).

Engineering expos are a great place to find potential new hires... you can usually figure out in about 5 minutes who really did the work on a project and who was just there for the college credits.

It was kinda slow on a stock C-64 with only a 1541 floppy drive -- a 256k RAM expansion unit made it a lot snappier.

---Joel

On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:24:24 -0800) it happened "Joel Koltner" wrote in :

Well, there exists no 'perfect' encryption, here is something that may make you think, you know about Quantum cryptography, and exchanging secret keys that 'cannot' be intercepted?

Related article in German:

I did put some stuff on the website, a Z80 disassembler, and a CP/M clone I wrote:

It is always nice meet somebody who actually has some real hands on experience :-)

Those early 8 bit processors were very code efficient. I loved the Z80 LDIR, OTIR, CPIR instructions to process or I/O a lot of bytes at the same time.

Hey, the original OS-9 (NOT Apple's) was pretty impressive. I ran it on a 128K RadioShack CoCo for years. A nice GUI for the day and it multi-tasked fairly well. I saw some ad space in a trades years ago from them, it was ported to the '386 and branded OS-9000. Might still be out there, haven't Googled it....

you think,

be intercepted?

quantum crypto systems

If you do not have to give a decryption key to anyone else then get a cryptographically secure random number generator. Create you own megabyte size key and XOR the documents you send to the cloud. There is no way anyone, ever, can break that encoding without the key.

On a sunny day (Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:57:02 +0000) it happened Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote in :

you think,

be intercepted?

quantum crypto systems

You are in the UK. in the UK the current law is that you have to hand over the key to officials if they want to see what your stuff is. Else you go to jail. An other example of 'democrazy'.

So, say you developed a revolutionary new way to do something, firmware, software, for say a customer in some other country. Now UK gov wants to know the details so they have the edge. They ask the key.

One time pad is not secure for an other reason too, because such a big key you need to store somewhere, they will search your place, take the computers, steal or obtain it in a legal way. There exists no secure encryption. That does not mean you should not use it though :-)

One-time pad is perfect... if you do it right.

John