I started on a DEC PDP-8/L with 4K of core memory. Due to a never- determined hardware problem, the FOCAL interpreter was often damaged and had to be reloaded from paper tape. We would key in the boot loader using the front panel toggle switches, then start the tape, which took approximately 20 minutes to load. Someone had to babysit the paper tape as it spooled out, keeping it in a nice fanfold so it wouldn't tangle.
So, yes, a three-minute startup is fine with me.
--Gene
"John Larkin" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
It keeps pace with the hardware, it is not that it gets slower. On the contrary. Win3.0 was typically found on 386sx running at 33MHz. Now that was slow indeed. But if you go out to by a windows PC today, it is at least 2GHz or better, and it does not run slow at all. Of course you shouldn't upgrade software on old PC.
As you once told, you don't write in C or C++, but only in 68K assembler and Power Basic, IIRC. How can you be the judge of that? I've written a dozen or so of windows applications, and my first attempts were indeed a mess because there is a lot you need to know. But the more I have learnt about it, the more I realize that there is no simple approach to make all these little wonders happen. Embedded computing is kindergarten stuff, compared to what's under the hood of windows. Okay, it crashes sometimes, big deal.
There's a lot to complain about Windows, but I am reasonably happy with it. The buffer overflow issue is blown out of proportion, it's not really an issue. Heh, I don't even run antivirus software.
Most trouble I see is caused by non-microsoft application software. Like Acrobat reader, still use 5.0, tried 6.0 and ditched it after
5 minutes.-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
"Anthony Fremont" schreef in bericht news:agXyd.4189$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.texas.rr.com...
You get what you pay for. Open office costs nothing, and I didn't like it. I don't care why, Java or not. Excel does it better, and yes, I have paid for it and helped reasing the 100 millions to develop it. I have no problems with that.
I'm not going to upgrade my Excel. There's no need. When I buy my next new computer I may purchase a new office bundle with it. As long as I don't get the monster trucks popping up with every mistake I make, I am sure I am going to enjoy it ;)
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly believe that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the fact that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer to boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the hard disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem where the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some such for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use the standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm just a computer programmer with some EET.
Charles
"John Larkin" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Sure it is. Boot time as a measure of quality is ridiculous. I boot once a day, sometimes perhaps twice, when Protel is playing up. The other day you hooked up that $79 usb microscope, that's progress.
My embedded stuff doesn't crash either, it would hardly know how to do that.
learnt
All I remember from DEC is that PDP11/03 that gave me sore knees, pulling the boards in & out to keep it going. RT11 OS if I remember well. What a piece of shit was that ;)
You should not compare your embedded stuff with de desktop computer running windows. Those are two entirely different species. Your 68K does only one thing - easy. If I plug your software in whatever 68K board, nothing happens, nada, zip. These are projects that can be done by just one or two persons, that's why I said it is kindergarten stuff compared to windows.
Imagine you had to deliver some kind of open system, where 3rd parties plug in their boards & drivers in your box. Would you like that? Can you still guarantee your product doesn't crash?
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
"Richard Henry" schreef in bericht news:YmZyd.3706$yW5.2601@fed1read02...
learnt
stuff,
sometimes,
You would be crazy to even try using windows in such an environment. I would not set one foot on a plane if I knew it was run by windows software. Software running on the average desktop computer is less critical.
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
"Charles W. Johson Jr." schreef in bericht news:cA_yd.9141$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
believe
fact
to
where
such
aGrandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is nonsense. How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a coffee, turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things during the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a while longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a new IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of the game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That is incredibly impressive.
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
"John Larkin" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
nonsense.
while
new
the
I agree that their business codes are nothing to be proud off. Well, they got a nice fine from the EU.
Still, peanuts for Bill. Perhaps the US government should squeeze a bit more money out of Bill ;)
Maybe that is what really bothers you, their attitude. Their products are not too bad though (anything after WIN3.x, that is).
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
"Gene S. Berkowitz" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@news.comcast.giganews.com...
in
computer
hard
the
just
nonsense.
while
new
the
Ah, I once saw that about 30 years ago, on a sales show. The sales person fiddling with the toggle switches for a minute perhaps, to start the bootloader and after that some moonlander game was started. At the time it was very impressive. Only a few years later I got my apple ][. Costed me an arm and a leg. Never regretted it. Didn't crash either, it just hang ;) Loved that name of the 16 bit emulator, sweet16.
Those were the days - but I would't want to back.
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
Which is absolutely the way to go.
Couldn't agree more.
I love you, soulbro' . Have a great Xmas ;).
Steve
"John Larkin" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
hold.
every
that
assembler
indeed
learnt
sometimes,
believe
fact
to
Ah, you can be really entertaining at times. Keep those stories coming! You seem to have a lot in common with your neighbour, except being gay ;)
-- Thanks, Frank. (remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email)
Hmmm.
I'm not sure there needs to be any distinction between the two: "good" design remains good, regardless of platform, or degree of complexity.
Granny and her boot time are part of the requirements. Bloat and reliability are down to the implementation. The two are - and should be kept - separate. Different mindsets and skillsets.
A "good" programming team should be able to take a well-designed requirement (for e.g. a vapourware, intuitive OS or application) and turn it (using best practice, with maximum synchronicity/determinism) into a piece of code which does what's required, with no surprises and no side-effects. And no bloat. What's so hard about that? We do it all the time in the embedded arena. Complexity is *not* the issue.
I deal mainly in bare-metal bulletproof (but plenty complex enough - mainly cooperative multitasking) code. The lessons I've learned over the years translate well to the desktop (given a good enough spec). Mainly they have to do with *managing* complexity, not letting it manage me.
This is a soapbox of mine. I hear "complexity" bandied about as an excuse for poor code all the time, and it *really* pisses me off. It's a sham, a smokescreen. Grrrr.
OpenBSD seems to be a pretty good example of an OS that's as reliable as it gets. I *heart* OpenBSD. (One of my commercial webhosting servers had a record uptime of 457 days, despite being under hacker attack 24/7 - only interrupted by a fairly major system upgrade ;).)
Summary: it doesn't have to be this way. There is still a market out there for a reliable, well-written, reliable, easy-to-use, and mainly *reliable* desktop OS. Windows ain't it, and neither are *nix nor the Mac (although the latter are probably/possibly closest). We've had decent multi-level MMUs for years - a rogue app needn't pull the whole system down. Bah humbug.
Meanwhile, may I wish you all a very merry and restful Christmas!
Steve
there
*reliable*(although the
MMUs for
This is precisely what makes me so mad about windows. The PC hardware is perfectly capable of protecting the OS from this sort of thing, but MS simply chooses to not do it right. :-(((((( Having spent >20 years digging around the innards of mainframe OS's, I'm really disappointed at what is passed off as "enterprise quality" today.
Namely, MS can never tell the difference between code and data; they have finally managed to allow worms in jpeg files, something that was once considered to be a hilarious joke. When in doubt, execute it.
John
No, kind of fuzzy on C++, mostly into Java.
Widgets (COM, Active-X) you code aren't part of the DHTML DOM, but can be scripted as if they were.
And how often does Grandma change the hardware in her computer? I don't know about you, but I *know* when I make physical changes to my computer, and would be quite happy to tell it that it needs to re-scan the hardware (USB and the like are obviously a different matter).
Last time I changed network cards on a Red Hat pc, I was informed on boot-up that the network card had changed, and would I like to transfer the old card's settings to the new card? Worked perfectly, even though the cards were from different manufacturers. Last time I did the same thing with windows (w2k), I was informed I had new hardware and the system could look for suitable drivers. Of course, I couldn't download them because the PC wasn't online, as the network card had no drivers. Thus I had to figure out exactly what the new card was - this involved reading chip types and other info and doing web searches (why can't manufacturers put their name and the card type on the board?), followed by a download of around 2.5 MB for a network driver ! This, of course, is too big for a floppy and thus involved split zip files (or I could have burned a CD...). Once I'd finally got the drivers installed and working, I then had to manually re-configure the new card with my old (static) settings.
What was that you were saying about how impressive windows hardware detection is?
Well, sure. What's wrong with that?
But not if the vector is determined at compile time, right?
So I guess I'm not a programmer. OK.
John
Of sorts... even if it's a static vector, as it implements a non-linear program flow back to the "application's" code.
aJudging by the length of this thread and your post count, I think it's clear which group you're in ;-)
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