DOS ain't dead - big RAM / 64-bit / etc.

big RAM / 64-bit / etc. (Announce)

posted by marcov, 04.04.2009, 15:13

> > In my case, the biggest limit is writing to disk. I have to rate limit
> the
> > amount of that that goes to disk, since in an ordinary system, the
> > HD/Windows can't store it. (100MByte/s is the theoretical max, but you
> > can't keep that up sustained). Some customers that really wanted all
> > images bought storage arrays. That helped.
>
> SSDs are too expensive but supposedly very quiet, low power, and fast
> (except for sequential reads?).

Well, there are several levels here. Sufficient to say that the recent "consumer" SSD are not what you want except for netbooks.

The "real" ones are very expensive Eur 800-1000+.

For the work situation I mentioned above, SSD is too expensive, for that price you also have drive arrays. Moreover, specially for the ones where we have performance bottlenecks (IOW save a lot), we need room.

I did look into buying a SSD for my private entertainment. Disk is a major bottleneck in FPC building (not that it is annoying, but just for fun), and in general any compiling. However the consumer devices didn't top harddisks, and the enterprise ones are to expensive. Better wait some years.

> > is a couple of times a year, while I work behind it every day.
>
> I do agree that DVD playback is mostly a useless gimmick (esp. for
> low-power laptops). Even moreso Blu-Ray. And not much other reason for
> widescreen that I can think of (for "normal" users like myself).

Well, the monitor part annoys me more than an unused BR engine on the videocard. Why? It is fun to be able to play them, but it is a rare circumstance, and I don't want to mutilate somehting I look at every day for the doubtful benefits of having "no stripes" that one time I watch video.

> > Well, that limit is not hard, and shifts with time. There have been
> people
> > making the same argument for 4kb, 64kb, 640kb, 16MB, 64MB, 512MB etc.
>
> I don't think anybody ever said 4k was enough for anything! ;-)

Yes they did, when the C=64 came out.

> As for the other numbers, blame seems to lie with either Intel or MS. (I
> actually read today, although highly doubt, that it was IBM's fault for
> 640k although MS had to push hard else IBM wanted 512k !!)

Not really. Mac have similar limitations. The 640k barrier was actually ok and visionary for quite a while. The problem is more that most people that hit it, got into PCs rather late in that cycle (1980-1994, the dos golden age)

> > I'd put the number on 2GB. Unless you use Vista, then go to the next
> > switch.
>
> I'm on Vista with 1 GB, which seems to work fine, but I'm used to low RAM
> DOS software, plus my (integrated / shared) video card sucks (and I
> disabled desktop composition), so I guess the latter doesn't waste much
> RAM (thankfully).

Brave :-)

> > Without VMs or specially memory hungry programs, I have enough with
> 2GB.
> > 1GB is simply to little if you use GNU tools, since I saw GNU LD use
> 1.6GB
> > to use a 6MB app. It is quite inefficient.
>
> I guess you mean building something big like FPC. Obviously for my wimpy
> attempts at using GCC/DJGPP, it's never gotten that high (mostly because
> the OS won't allow it, heh).

It is if you try to get the binaries as small as possible.

> I still say you should try building the
> "Gold" (ELF) linker sometime or get one of the other FPC devs to send it
> to you (or tell you how it works for them, etc).

They see Ian Lance Taylor's msgs on comp.compilers, just like I do.

> > The app where I spend every free hour on (FPC) is about 2MB. (the main
> > compiler binary. It is significantly bigger under 64-bit though)
>
> I still feel AMD64 is still a toy for (almost all) people. I'm not saying
> it isn't useful in the right hands, but it will take time.

I took the plunge in february. Put in a new HD, and decided to reinstall Linux instead of moving it (the old one was upgraded twice already). I installed the 64-bit version as the "main" linux (still have 32-bit in a VM)

> BTW, still haven't heard if you were
> able to build DOSEMU for FreeBSD yet (no pressure). ;-)

Hmm. I have to boot freebsd anyway this weekend. Will see if I can do anything.

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Complete thread:

CHM reader in DOS - Laaca, 21.03.2009, 08:57 (Announce)
- CHM reader in DOS - DOS386, 22.03.2009, 05:42
  - CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 23.03.2009, 17:22
    - CHM reader in DOS - DOS386, 31.03.2009, 03:47
- CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 23.03.2009, 17:21
  - CHM reader in DOS - Laaca, 23.03.2009, 18:43
    - CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 23.03.2009, 21:30
      - CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 26.03.2009, 17:51
        CHM reader in DOS - Rugxulo, 01.04.2009, 13:27
        CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 01.04.2009, 23:39
        CHM reader in DOS - Rugxulo, 02.04.2009, 00:16
        CHM reader in DOS - marcov, 02.04.2009, 10:35
        big RAM / 64-bit / etc. - Rugxulo, 02.04.2009, 21:19
        big RAM / 64-bit / etc. - marcov, 04.04.2009, 15:13
        big RAM / 64-bit / etc. - Rugxulo, 04.04.2009, 17:21
        big problem ??? RAM / 64-bit / etc. - DOS386, 05.04.2009, 04:27
        big problem ??? RAM / 64-bit / etc. - marcov, 06.04.2009, 10:04
        big problem ??? RAM / 64-bit / etc. - DOS386, 07.04.2009, 04:32
        big problem ??? RAM / 64-bit / etc. - marcov, 07.04.2009, 13:24
        big problem ??? RAM / 64-bit / etc. - Rugxulo, 07.04.2009, 13:42
        big RAM / 64-bit / etc. - marcov, 06.04.2009, 09:53
        big RAM / 64-bit / etc. - Rugxulo, 07.04.2009, 00:43