Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Amiga basher
Message-ID: <1991Jun16.171812.22946@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX
References: <1991Jun13.065150.3529@cs.mcgill.ca> <1991Jun16.040300.17455@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Jun16.062152.17153@cs.mcgill.ca>
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1991 17:18:12 GMT

In article <1991Jun16.062152.17153@cs.mcgill.ca> genius@cs.mcgill.ca (Michel NGUYEN) writes:
> So, correct me if I'm wrong here, if you set the chess (or/and all the other
> apps except the *serious* computation prg) at priority -1, how long do you
> have to wait before the chess game makes its move or the tetris block makes
> 1 move down? ...not until the 20 minutes computations is finished? Or do
> you have to take a coffee between each move (for tetris)? 

No, you set the serious computation app at -1, and let it soak up the CPU
time. It still gets nearly 100% of the CPU. Read the last message I wrote:
Mandel was eating all the spare CPU time. I just paused it, and now PM shows
as near to zero CPU time usage as I can tell, no matter what *interactive*
tasks I run. So it was virtually unaffected by them.

That's what real-time process scheduling is all about.

> Does the Chess prg set at priority -1 satisfy you?

No, at priority 0. Mandel is at -1. Think about it.

> Tell me Peter, what have you seen? 

Hundreds of Macs, all of which die horribly as soon as I start doing what
I consider normal things on them. X-windows, with many of the same design
flaws as the Mac, and which take a 17 MIPS CPU to get the same responsiveness
as my 0.7 MIPS Amiga 1000. Microsoft Windows, which is gorgeous but an
excersize in frustration.

Oh, and the original Xerox Star and 1100 running Smalltalk and Interlisp-D.
As well as any number of older UNIX windowing systems that, simply because
they had to run in small systems, were conservative of resources. Really,
the 68010-based 3b1 was more responsive under WM or MGR than a sparc-1
under X.

You can cover up poor design by throwing MIPS at it, or adapt to it so it
doesn't hurt you too much, but it doesn't go away.

"God created the world in 7 days because he didn't have to worry about
 backwards compatibility".
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'   <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
                   'U`    "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
