krowitz@richter.UUCP (David Krowitz) (03/31/88)
Here, here!!! I agree! I can remember working on a DEC-10 mainframe that only had 64K words (about 256k bytes) of memory, total. I even wrote a real-time, multi-tasking OS for a PDP-8 that fit in less than 8K words. This all requires some carefull planning and good, old fashioned programming by people who understand the hardware (something which is getting increasing rare these days) -- things like grouping subroutines which call each other onto the same memory pages so to reduce the VM paging for the OS, actually counting the number of assembler instructions produced by the compilers, and analyzing the assembly code to see if it can be shrunk in size/speed up. Most programmers get taught Lisp, and Pascal in school, learn C out of necessity, and have never seen the assembler for the machine they are working on. Apollo doesn't even have a hardware architecture manual for their machines, and the assembler (they do have one) is not a realeased product. The philosophy of the day is that programming is to provide features, and hardware is to provide performance. Given the relative costs of engineers/programmers and a new DN3000, that is not a bad philosophy (I cost my boss over $60,000 a year when you through in MIT's overhead and benefits, and DN3000 can be had for $3500); but *skilled* programming can provide *both*! -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu mit-erl!mit-richter!krowitz@eddie.mit.edu mit-erl!mit-richter!krowitz@mit-eddie.arpa krowitz@mit-mc.arpa (in order of decreasing preference)
ferguson@BKNLVMS.BITNET (03/31/88)
Does anyone think that maybe DOMAIN/OS could start getting smaller? It's neat to provide three operating systems, but two megabytes of RAM just to get a window up is a bit much. It seems to me like a Commodore Amiga can do an awful lot with only a little RAM, and when you have to scrap it because of OS updates, it only costs you about a thousand bucks or two. I know this sounds a little childish, but I'm a bit tired of planned obsolescence, and I'd like to start getting some constructive work done instead of scraping up money, installing new equipment, then finding out that its time for something else. Sorry to annoy you. Scott Ferguson
giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) (04/08/88)
In article <8803301650.AA05734@ELI.CS.YALE.EDU> ferguson@BKNLVMS.BITNET writes: > >Does anyone think that maybe DOMAIN/OS could start getting smaller? I don't really know why the OS is getting bigger, but I do know that there are other vendors which support unix which also don't support less than two meg. I might look at the greater support of unix as a reason why you need more memory. Of course there is a trade-in program (at least out of our local office) if that helps [I with hold my opinion of the trade-in program]. -- UUCP: {uunet, ihnp4!umn-cs}!hi-csc!giebelhaus ARPA: hi-csc!giebelhaus@umn-cs.arpa Nobody I know admits to sharing my opinions. I don't even have a pet which will share my opinion.