warner@s3snorkel.ARPA (Ken Warner) (12/19/88)
Softsmarts had a version of Smalltalk-80 which would run on an AT. They went belly-up. Who got their kernel? Did it revert somehow to ParcPlace? What is ParcPlace going to do about a '286 version of PPS-80...anything? We (S-Cubed) have potential customers for an application written in Smalltalk-80 but they have '286 boxes of various kinds. Their procurement-cycle will guarantee that it will be years before they move to '386 boxes, for which there is already a PPS-80 version. The reason we don't want to use V/286 is because we want to remain portable to other workstations, like Sun's and/or Mac II's, for development purposes. ParcPlace...are you listening? You have said that your stuff won't run on '286 boxes--how did Softsmarts do it? I had a demo copy of Softsmarts Smalltalk-80 and it ran OK. Not blazing fast, but acceptable. I'll bet there are a lot of people that would really like a '286 version of PPS-80. I know I would. Ken Warner
hmm@laura.UUCP (Hans-Martin Mosner) (12/21/88)
In article <904@scubed.UUCP> warner@s3snorkel.UUCP (Ken Warner) writes: >ParcPlace...are you listening? You have said that your stuff won't run on >'286 boxes--how did Softsmarts do it? As far as I know, they had a 16-bit system. This means that you have an upper limit on the number of objects (32 or 48 k, depends on SmallInteger range). >I had a demo copy of Softsmarts >Smalltalk-80 and it ran OK. Not blazing fast, but acceptable. Maybe, but you can forget about serious software development with a small object space... PPS has 32 bit object pointers, which means that the only limiting factor for applications is the total amount of available memory, at least since version 2.4 (2.3 and earlier have 24-bit memory addresses). But it also means that 16-bit machines like the 80x86 (x<3) are almost unusable for the system. > >I'll bet there are a lot of people that would really like a '286 version of >PPS-80. I know I would. Sure. And I would even more like it if it would run on my Casio wristwatch :-) There are simply limits on the things you can do with such a machine. The Smalltalk environment is demanding, and I think that burning CPU cycles to provide a good user interface is basically a Good Thing to do. But it means that you can't do it on every machine... The smallest machine to seriously use PPS Smalltalk-80 is a 8 Mhz 68000 with 4 Meg memory. Our port to the Atari Mega ST does about 46 % Dorado (which is the fastest 68000 port around :-), and this is barely enough. A full port on a 12 MHz 80286 would probably be much slower... Hans-Martin -- Hans-Martin Mosner | Don't tell Borland about Smalltalk - | hmm@unido.{uucp,bitnet} | they might invent Turbo Smalltalk ! | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer: Turbo Smalltalk may already be a trademark of Borland...