🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4335ku$np8@orion.cybercom.net>,
Jerry Shekhel <jerry@cybercom.net> wrote:
>Juergen Wahlmann (ibl-juwa@wiso.wiso.uni-dortmund.de) wrote:
>
>It's also in the hands of the OS to protect the user's machine from crashing
>due to a bug in one of the programs he's running.  And developing software in
>an environment without memory protection is a nightmare compared to the
>alternative.

I don't find it to be too much of a problem. It is true that when developing
software on my Amiga, I have to reboot fairly frequently, but it only takes
a few seconds. It is usually fairly obvious when my code has gone wrong. ;)

>: BTW, Unix runs smooth in 16MB of Ram, AmigaOS in 4MB. That's more than 
>: "some memory", isn't it? 
>It would be, if your numbers were accurate.  They aren't.

They sound about right to me. At work I use a Linux system with 8Mb of RAM
and a DX2 66 processor. When it is running X I certainly wouldn't call it
smooth. Our 32Mb system is smooth, and from the memory usage I would think
16Mb is about right for smooth usage.

At home I have an Amiga A500+ (yes with a 7MHz 68000) and 4Mb RAM. Even
with this minimal setup, the system IS smooth. Also note that that 4Mb
includes the video ram for the screen as well. I have yet to find a
situation where I would require virtual RAM. I tested it once:
I ran at the same time:

ProTracker playing a 300Kb module.
DPaint 3 with 2 small images.
Devpac Assembler Editor with the source code for one of my games.
(80k source)
The Devpac Debugger
My game into the debugger.
Another copy of my game on the RAM disk. (300K game code)
The include files for my game on the RAM disk.
The AMOS basic interpreter and the Compiler Loaded into memory.
Several of my utilities loaded into AMOS.
Several shell windows.
XOPER system monitor.
Various OS utility programs resident in memory.

I seem to remember I still had about 200K of my 4Meg left at that point.

As this is about as loaded as my system gets during development, I am quite
happy with 4Meg.

>: System performance depends on the data throughput. The lesser the OS swaps
>: the faster it is. That's one great advantage of AmigaOS over other OS's.
>When I run out of physical RAM, I'd much rather have my OS swap than stop.

Which is fair enough. However, as shown above, the only time I am likely
to run out physical RAM is if I want to do some serious image editing.
I that case I really should be using a more powerful computer, and the
higher end Amigas do support virtual memory with 3rd party software.

Do note that I am not knocking Linux, it is an excellent system which I
will be using once my new P120 arrives. ;)

Cheers

John Reynolds
mailto:john.reynolds@ccc.ox.ac.uk
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK