gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (08/07/88)
> >>> The Mac ][ still can't animate worth a pint of sour owl shit. > >No blitter. My Sun-3/160-C (1152x900x8 color) has no blitter and it is plenty fast. It *does* have hardware that can merge the data that the CPU writes to the color card, in with the existing data. (In fact, it has 8 "rasterop chips", one per plane, which can all work in parallel.) But it doesn't do any DMA. A 68020 makes a GREAT DMA controller, highly programmable and fast. Most Sun CPUs already run their memory flat-out at top speed, so any time a DMA device is touching memory, the CPU is likely to be hung anyway. The last Amiga hardware design I looked at ran the CPU at like half the speed of RAM, so they could use slow, cheap CPU chips. > -It doesn't multitask worth a pint of sour owl shit either, though it > seems to be acceptable to the Mac users (better than what they had > before anyway). Funny, we run A/UX (Almost Unix) on our Mac-II and it multitasks just fine. Even though A/UX shipped a year or 18 months late, it is finally here. Where is Amiga's Unix, so Amiga users can stop reinventing 10 and 20 and 30 year old software and start moving forward? -- John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com "And if there's danger don't you try to overlook it, Because you knew the job was dangerous when you took it"
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (08/08/88)
The rest of your article is right on... the blitter isn't the problem with the Mac II. The problem is purely software. *Apple's* software. A/UX doesn't count... a Mac-II running AUX is just another workstation (JAW-II). In article <5053@hoptoad.uucp>, gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: > Funny, we run A/UX (Almost Unix) on our Mac-II and it multitasks just > fine. Even though A/UX shipped a year or 18 months late, it is finally > here. Where is Amiga's Unix, so Amiga users can stop reinventing 10 > and 20 and 30 year old software and start moving forward? Where's realtime performance from UNIX? I'll give up my superfast context switches when they pry my cold, dead, fingers off the keyboard. UNIX on the Amiga is harder than on the Mac, since to keep all the nice features of AmigaDOS it will have to run on top of it... whereas the Mac was still waiting for an O/S when A/UX came along. One point to note, about the blitter... since the Amiga's memory is split into two busses, you can run code out of FAST memory while the blitter is banging away at CHIP memory. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?
iphwk%MTSUNIX1.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Bill Kinnersley) (08/08/88)
[In "Re: Mac ][ bashing / blitters are not everything", John Gilmore said:] > > Amiga hardware design I looked at ran the CPU at like half the speed of RAM, > so they could use slow, cheap CPU chips. > No no, John, you've got it backwards.. The *RAM* runs at *twice* the speed of the *CPU*. :-)
rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) (08/08/88)
In article <5053@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >Funny, we run A/UX (Almost Unix) on our Mac-II and it multitasks just >fine. Even though A/UX shipped a year or 18 months late, it is finally >here. Where is Amiga's Unix, so Amiga users can stop reinventing 10 >and 20 and 30 year old software and start moving forward? ah, i see, you have multitasking under A/UX. And you run, what, microsoft word and hypercard and and macpaint and macdraw on this machine as you are running A/UX? And you can run queries on hypercard data bases from A/UX applications? Be nice to maintain /etc/passwd in a hypercard database, with pictures and all. And you can import MacDraw pictures into the TeX documents under A/UX? And you can, ..., well you get my drift. Can you, or can't you. If you can, you have a heck of a nice system there. I might even buy one. And if you can't, what's the point? That you can build an over-priced unix box out of the MAC ][? A box that is about as compatible with the Mac OS as an amiga is? ron P.S. Damn shame about hypercard. Apple could define the standard hypertext environment with this product if they would only be as open about it as sun is about NeWS. Instead they are using it to sell one hardware platform that will only ever be a niche machine. Thing is, if they opened it up it would probably sell MORE mac ]['s...
dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) (08/10/88)
>> -It doesn't multitask worth a pint of sour owl shit either, though it >> seems to be acceptable to the Mac users (better than what they had >> before anyway). > >Funny, we run A/UX (Almost Unix) on our Mac-II and it multitasks just >fine. Even though A/UX shipped a year or 18 months late, it is finally >here. Where is Amiga's Unix, so Amiga users can stop reinventing 10 >and 20 and 30 year old software and start moving forward? >-- >John Gilmore {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com > "And if there's danger don't you try to overlook it, > Because you knew the job was dangerous when you took it" > John, surely you have been following the various arguments on *THAT* issue. The jist is essentially: You might be able to run an operating system on some machine and get multitasking, for instance OS 9 on an Atari, but that doesn't let you run all the old software under multitasking, does it. I.E. the software under to original/standard OS. After all, one can run UNIX on just about anything these days. If you have a need to run UNIX (and there are many good reasons to do so), then everything is just dandy for you, but if 99% of the users of the machine and 99% of the software for the machine is using the MAC-OS, you cannot truely say that the multitasking UNIX provides solves the problem in general. So in your specific case: good, fine, great, solved. But everybody else still has their book open to the same problem. -Matt
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/19/88)
in article <8808100909.AA00265@cory.Berkeley.EDU>, dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) says: > >>> -It doesn't multitask ... >>Funny, we run A/UX (Almost Unix) on our Mac-II and it multitasks ... > John, surely you have been following the various arguments on *THAT* > issue. The jist is essentially: You might be able to run an operating system > on some machine and get multitasking, for instance OS 9 on an Atari, but that > doesn't let you run all the old software under multitasking, does it. I.E. > the software under to original/standard OS. > -Matt And that's only part of it. If most users are single-tasking on a machine, there's a really good chance that not many hardware vendors are considering the hardware ramifications of multi-tasking. Which may mean that when you do start multitasking on such a machine, you may hit hard performance walls that never surface when you're single tasking. For example, consider hard disks. At least on some Macs (don't personally know about the Mac II), they handle disk I/O using a clever little hack that basically turns your data ready signal from the hard disk control chip into DTACK* for the CPU, so you read a full block just about as fast as possible with the CPU. Not all that bad for a single-tasking setup, as the program is sleeping during this transfer anyway. But come a multitasking OS, and all of a sudden this becomes a long atomic operation that takes a bite out of your performance. The standard Amiga hard drive controller is a DMA/FIFO combo that works better than interrupt or Mac-style I/O when you have the CPU sliced up amoung a number of tasks. -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"