The real fight Atari versus Commodore

[_The Doctor__]

Once a serial version is completed I bet someone does a series parallel device.... AVG is already a proof of concept in that realm as it U1M/SIDEB

Edited March 27, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Mazzspeed]

Parallel isn't always faster however. Just look at modern PC's with the shift from PATA to SATA.

 

I know for a fact my 1541 running the S-JiffyDOS rom with the C64 running the standard JiffyDOS kernel is faster than Commodore's SFD1001 running the IEEE-488 parallel interface. The 1541 also has better compatibility. However, if there's faster gear on the way, that just means I have to blow more $$ getting it!

[Sugarland]

7 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

And the harsh reality is that today games are the one huge reason why people use Windows, that and Microsoft Office, which is actually less compatible with ISO standards than competing products (some of which are free).

 

The PC took off as a platform due to it's open nature, the only thing IBM were originally responsible for was that BIOS chip. There was little that was technically impressive about the platform, it was basically the next step from the S100 bus design.

 

The early IBM build quality was fantastic. Excellent keyboards. Using the machine was tactile, even if a DOS machine felt somewhat crude in how nearly everything was text mode. They unified all the different technologies in a fantastic overall design. It was worth a higher asking price if it returned on the investment. Just shows how the race to the cheapest price was not the winning strategy.

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Sugarland

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, Sugarland said:

 

The early IBM build quality was fantastic. Excellent keyboards. Using the machine was tactile, even if a DOS machine felt somewhat crude in how nearly everything was text mode. They unified all the different technologies in a fantastic overall design. It was worth a higher asking price if it returned on the investment. Just shows how the race to the cheapest price was not the winning strategy.

 

It depends on the market you're aiming for.

 

"Mum, I want a CGA XT for Christmas"...Said no kid...

 

...Ever.

[Sugarland]

9 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

It depends on the market you're aiming for.

 

"Mum, I want a CGA XT for Christmas"...Said no kid...

 

...Ever.

 

Few eight year olds would but teenagers loved their PC's I remember a few. We got an 8mhz XT clone with 640K + 30MB HDD + a Panasonic printer in '86 and it was very nice. The games did suck for the most part but it was great for modeming.

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Sugarland

[Mazzspeed]

1 minute ago, Sugarland said:

 

Few eight year olds would but teenagers loved their PC's I remember a few. We got an 8mhz XT clone with 640K + 30MB HDD + a Panasonic printer in '86 and it was very nice. The games did suck for the most part but it was great for modeming.

 

I was never allowed to have a modem until the very late 80s/early 90s. As an Amiga user I resisted the PC platform for as long as I could.

 

I still think AmigaOS 3.1 is an awesome operating system, it craps on Windows 3.1.

[Sugarland]

10 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

I was never allowed to have a modem until the very late 80s/early 90s. As an Amiga user I resisted the PC platform for as long as I could.

 

I still think AmigaOS 3.1 is an awesome operating system, it craps on Windows 3.1.

 

Sorry to hear!   That does suck. Oh yes Win3.1 is pretty bad! I got an A500 in '87 and that was a big upgrade from the 130XE in many ways. However in retrospect I think the A8's were just as fun or maybe even more so in some ways, except for Dungeon Master. They're all great though.  Knew another Amigan who resisted the PC for as long as he could. I relented to leave Amiga in '92 and get a 486/33 PC for work purposes. It was the right move because Amiga specific skills in the 90's had little value but they were great to use and learn on ofc.

 

[Faicuai]

7 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

games are the one huge reason why people use Windows, that and Microsoft Offic

Sounds a bit (to me) more like a idealistic reality, synthesized from a Linux-powered basement.

 

EVERYTHING (every single, real, commercial productive tool that I know) runs on Windows. Architectural and design offices (with Autocad, etc.), Video and production and animation (Dreamworks Studios, etc,), most of corporate America, the US Government, the US army (the most powerful in the planet), small and medium size business, Financial and Trading offices, Oil Production, Automotive Design, etc., etc., etc., runs on WINDOWS. Plain and simple.

 

NO  business concerned about its own integrity opens its core productive functions (and trade secrets) to free software... Sorry to be the party pooper, here, but that story will hardly ever fly.

 

And to the above extent, the finest 8-bit computing known in existence, today (Altirra) runs on WINDOWS. Forgot to mention.

 

 

[Faicuai]

30 minutes ago, Sugarland said:

 

The early IBM build quality was fantastic. Excellent keyboards. Using the machine was tactile, even if a DOS machine felt somewhat crude in how nearly everything was text mode. They unified all the different technologies in a fantastic overall design. It was worth a higher asking price if it returned on the investment. Just shows how the race to the cheapest price was not the winning strategy.

 

Dead on, for anyone who had the real feel and experience. I sold them (as well as PS series, along Atari, Commodore, Epson, Tandy, when I was pretty young...)

 

Even all the way to COMPAQ, which was the real first competition of IBM at the office, had AMAZING build quality (because they knew what they were up against). My Artificial Intelligence grad. work was developed on Windows 3.11, IBM/3090, obeject and event-oriented programming, in the Oil industry, and on Compaq microcomputers (386). The IBM/PC generation made look a lot of stuff like plain toys !!!

 

Even YEARS later they called us for support !! ??

 

[Mazzspeed]

1 hour ago, Faicuai said:

NO  business concerned about its own integrity opens its core productive functions (and trade secrets) to free software... Sorry to be the party pooper, here, but that story will hardly ever fly.

Well.

 

As someone that used to set corporations up under Linux I can assure you beyond all doubt this is not the case at all. Even when you run Windows systems, you stuff the core Windows network behind Linux internet facing servers or you virtualize Windows servers under Linux. Open source most definitely does not make an OS less secure.

 

It sounds like you think Linux hasn't moved on from 2013, I can assure you that while Windows 10 has been going backwards compared to Windows of the past, Linux has been leaping ahead in strides.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Mazzspeed]

51 minutes ago, Sugarland said:

 

Sorry to hear!   That does suck. Oh yes Win3.1 is pretty bad! I got an A500 in '87 and that was a big upgrade from the 130XE in many ways. However in retrospect I think the A8's were just as fun or maybe even more so in some ways, except for Dungeon Master. They're all great though.  Knew another Amigan who resisted the PC for as long as he could. I relented to leave Amiga in '92 and get a 486/33 PC for work purposes. It was the right move because Amiga specific skills in the 90's had little value but they were great to use and learn on ofc.

 

It is funny you say this...

 

I'm the same in many ways. The 8bit machines will always hold a place in my heart as machines of wonder. Once we advanced into the 16bit era, it was definitely impressive, but just didn't seem to capture me like the 8bit era did.

 

I moved onto the PC when I needed to start coding in COBOL and Pascal, the PC was what we were using at uni so that's what I was forced to get.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Faicuai]

9 hours ago, emkay said:

Well, the reality is that Intel and Microsoft did the best job of all.

Absolutely, you got that right. And not just for months, or years... but for DECADES !!

 

And it started with that contract signed between Bill Gates and IBM, here in Boca. Both Bill and Paul already saw what was happening to IBM (and its competition) on the Mainframe space... and they visualized the same dynamics and competition quite possible on the Personal Computing space, too.

 

They left a tiny / small provision on the contract to be able to retain rights to license their technology beyond IBM (instead of selling it outright to big blue), and that allowed them to license MS/DOS (not IBM DOS) to future PC-manufacturers. Soon enough, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, etc. all followed suit, thus propelling Microsoft to stratospheric success, and cementing its presence at the OFIICE where it really counted the most.

 

Talk about absolute, pure instictive business genius !

 

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Faicuai

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Absolutely, you got that right. And not just for months, or years... but for DECADES !!

 

And it started with that contract signed between Bill Gates and IBM, here with in Boca. Both Bill and Paul already saw what was happening to IBM (and its competition) on the Mainframe space... and they visualized the same dynamics and competition quite possible on the Personal Computing space, too.

 

They left a tiny / small provision on the contract to be able to retain rights to license their technology beyond IBM (instead of selling it outright to big blue), and that allowed them to license MS/DOS (not IBM DOS) to future PC-manufacturers. Soon enough, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, etc. all followed suit, thus propelling Microsoft to stratospheric success, and cementing its presence at the OFIICE where it really counted the most.

 

Talk about absolute, pure instictive business genius !

And now most of Microsoft's cloud based infrastructure runs Linux! We even have WSL2 under Windows 10, and Edge [gag] for Linux.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Faicuai]

1 minute ago, Mazzspeed said:

And now most of Microsoft's cloud based infrastructure runs Linux! We even have WSL2 under Windows 10.

Microsoft cares about its end-user eco-system. Today, no end user at the office cares an iota about Linux on their laptops or desktops, and that is not a technical, but a commercial reality.

 

Now, go to the data-center, and that is another story. 

 

 

[Mazzspeed]

10 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

Microsoft cares about its end-user eco-system. Today, no end user at the office cares an iota about Linux on their laptops or desktops, and that is not a technical, but a commercial reality.

 

Now, go to the data-center, and that is another story. 

 

 

That's not true either, in fact it's well known that MS made their users basically beta testers for their OS and have actually reduced resources to Windows substantially and increased resources to the cloud (which primarily runs Linux). I love it when a new major update is released as I get a number of new clients.

 

Microsoft now make vastly more profit out of their cloud division than their Windows division.

 

Furthermore, Linux usage has increased while Windows usage has dropped - During COVID Linux usage spiked considerably. In fact, the entire Hollywood SFX industry primarily runs Linux on everything from their workstations to their servers and clusters, nothing else is fast enough considering NUMA and the Linux scheduler, and nothing else can provide the sustained network transfer speeds Linux is capable of due to it's versatility regarding file systems.

 

The one reason for Windows popularity is the fact it's on the device when you buy it, and judging by the fact that globally Android is actually the more popular OS, it seems people are tiring of Windows. With the advent of workplaces switching to BYOD models, Linux is actually becoming quite popular.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Mclaneinc]

Loving this thread now, sure its a bit OT but the quality and clarity of the discussion is just spot on, on the tech side most of it is above my pay grade but its good reading without becoming a sniping war..

 

Excellent to those participating..

[emkay]

4 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

 

 

The one reason for Windows popularity is the fact it's on the device when you buy it, and judging by the fact that globally Android is actually the more popular OS, it seems people are tiring of Windows. With the advent of workplaces switching to BYOD models, Linux is actually becoming quite popular.

 

On a cultivated garden , you will always grow weeds faster than the product you have worked for. 

There are a lot reasons, why "Linux" or ONE of a gazillion forks might do the job faster than an OS that is taking care of what the user wants. 

If the owners of their system knew about the hackability of Linux, they might rethink of it. 

All the security mechanisms in Windows makes it Hackers almost impossible to change System files from the internet. 

While in Linux you only need to use a feature that one distribution doesn't offer, to open a huge gate for hackers. 

But that is something I don't want to discuss here

 

To have a crossover to the thread:

It's exactly the problem , you always have: 

A coder might think "how great is my software", while MS always was about "what does the user think is great in our software".

So, to have a platform interesting for others, the coder has to place software, others like.

 

Here on the A8 Platform, it is 100% vice versa. 

Every code is just done to satisfy the coder himself.

 

 

 

[Mazzspeed]

1 hour ago, emkay said:

 

On a cultivated garden , you will always grow weeds faster than the product you have worked for. 

There are a lot reasons, why "Linux" or ONE of a gazillion forks might do the job faster than an OS that is taking care of what the user wants. 

If the owners of their system knew about the hackability of Linux, they might rethink of it. 

All the security mechanisms in Windows makes it Hackers almost impossible to change System files from the internet. 

While in Linux you only need to use a feature that one distribution doesn't offer, to open a huge gate for hackers. 

But that is something I don't want to discuss here

 

To have a crossover to the thread:

It's exactly the problem , you always have: 

A coder might think "how great is my software", while MS always was about "what does the user think is great in our software".

So, to have a platform interesting for others, the coder has to place software, others like.

 

Here on the A8 Platform, it is 100% vice versa. 

Every code is just done to satisfy the coder himself.

 

 

 

This is all quite silly really. 

 

Linux is 'hackable'...Hmmmm, I really have no idea just what you're trying to imply here. The only thing I can think of is that you're also of the mind set that open source is somehow more vulnerable than closed source - Which is of course, as mantioned above, just plan silly talk. If Linux was in any way more vulenrable than Windows I'm sure it wouldn't make up the entire backbone of the internet, which it does.

 

Furthermore, you can't hide behind the argument of security via obscurity (as many Windows fanatics believe that Windows is the most attacked platform due to the fact it's just so popular), because globally Android is more popular than Windows. Android is based on Linux, and it suffers a miniscule fraction of the Malware, Trojans, PuP's, Cryptolockers, Ransomware and virus infections that plague the Windows platform.

 

In fact in the first quarter of 2020 Windows infections made up 83.45% of all infections, while Android was only 3.24% - Effectively such facts blow security via obscurity completely out of the water. Furthermore, it's totally plausible to compare a mobile platform to a desktop platform when they're both such outstanding attack vectors and Microsoft themselves have done their best to make Windows a fat fingered mobile and desktop operating system.

 

Lately, Microsoft has always been about "How can be best milk our client base for personal information and money", they really couldn't care a hoot for what the end user wants. Really, if you want a great end user experience, it stands to reason that you're best to run an OS actually made by 'end users'.

 

Windows is a mishmash of touch and desktop UI, basically a compromise, and really excelling at neither.

 

Your comment regarding the use of features not supported by your distro is also just silly. Under Linux you install software using secure keys, with software usually contained in secure repositories. Under Windows you install any .msi installer from any obscure corner of the internet and just hope for the best, hence the reason PuP's are such a huge issue. There's no security whatsoever.

 

As far as Windows making it almost impossible to manipulate system files from the internet, this is just not true when most people run their user profile as administrator and UAC is hardly an effective elevation tool. In fact MS themselves can be quoted as stating that UAC was never intended to be a privilege escalation tool, it was supposed to piss off users so developers would stop coding software that insisted on running as administrator.

 

Whether it be the C64 or Linux, all I'm reading is hyperbole with little merit. In fact it's blatantly obvious people are commenting on platforms they really have no idea about.

 

Use whatever suits your use case. This discussion is not about Windows vs Linux, let's get back on topic.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[emkay]

28 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

This is all quite silly really. 

 

Linux is 'hackable'...Hmmmm, I really have no idea just what you're trying to imply here. The only thing I can think of is that you're also of the mind set that open source is somehow more vulnerable than closed source - Which is of course, as mantioned above, just plan silly talk. If Linux was in any way more vulenrable than Windows I'm sure it wouldn't make up the entire backbone of the internet, which it does.

 

Furthermore, you can't hide behind the argument of security via obscurity (as many Windows fanatics believe that Windows is the most attacked platform due to the fact it's just so popular), because globally Android is more popular than Windows. Android is based on Linux, and it suffers a miniscule fraction of the Malware, Trojans, PuP's, Cryptolockers, Ransomware and virus infections that plague the Windows platform.

 

In fact in the first quarter of 2020 Windows infections made up 83.45% of all infections, while Android was only 3.24% - Effectively such facts blow security via obscurity completely out of the water. Furthermore, it's totally plausible to compare a mobile platform to a desktop platform when they're both such outstanding attack vectors and Microsoft themselves have done their best to make Windows a fat fingered mobile and desktop operating system.

 

Lately, Microsoft has always been about "How can be best milk our client base for personal information and money", they really couldn't care a hoot for what the end user wants. Really, if you want a great end user experience, it stands to reason that you're best to run an OS actually made by 'end users'.

 

Windows is a mishmash of touch and desktop UI, basically a compromise, and really excelling at neither.

 

Your comment regarding the use of features not supported by your distro is also just silly. Under Linux you install software using secure keys, with software usually contained in secure repositories. Under Windows you install any .msi installer from any obscure corner of the internet and just hope for the best, hence the reason PuP's are such a huge issue. There's no security whatsoever.

 

As far as Windows making it almost impossible to manipulate system files from the internet, this is just not true when most people run their user profile as administrator and UAC is hardly an effective elevation tool. In fact MS themselves can be quoted as stating that UAC was never intended to be a privilege escalation tool, it was supposed to piss off users so developers would stop coding software that insisted on running as administrator.

 

Whether it be the C64 or Linux, all I'm reading is hyperbole with little merit. In fact it's blatantly obvious people are commenting on platforms they really have no idea about.

 

Use whatever suits your use case. This discussion is not about Windows vs Linux, let's get back on topic.

Your whole post makes no sense.

People write pages offtopic. 

I have been turning the thread again to topic in my last post, and then you excell the sterotypes to the top.

 

 

 

[Grover Torbel]

It’s an Atari / Commodore by Holden! See, we CAN all get along. [emoji12]. (For those of you not in Australia, just look up Holden Commodore.)

[Faicuai]

7 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

That's not true either,

A good dosis of reality will help us keep our feet on the ground:

 

 

At the desktop, basically no one gives a flying f_k for Linux and its incoherent genealogy.  

 

It is Apple's OS the one gaining ground...

 

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Faicuai

[Faicuai]

8 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

nothing else is fast enough considering NUMA

Well, this one is surely going to be a heart-breaker:

 

http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/guides/multithreading.html

 

"

Linux:

 

On Linux everything is bad. I'm not kidding. Everything is bad.

• std::async is the same as thread spawning.
• The Windows thread pool is not available. 
• The Push Pool isn't much better than thread spawning.
• Cilk Plus reeks of the same overhead that kills it on Windows.
• Cilk Plus is deprecated and has been removed from GCC.
• GCC doesn't support TBB out-of-box.

Multi-threaded computations on Linux are roughly 5 - 10% slower than on Windows. But single-threaded computations are within 1%. So it's not like the code is slow on Linux. It's just that parallelization simply sucks on Linux for some reason. This is same regardless of whether you're spawning threads or reusing them.

"

 

Hope that things have changed for the better with Linux since last update, though...

 

Now we can go back to kiddie-computing "C64-vs-the_universe" syndrome. ?

Edited March 27, 2021 by Faicuai

[thorfdbg]

1 hour ago, Faicuai said:

Well, this one is surely going to be a heart-breaker:

 

http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/guides/multithreading.html

 

"

Linux:

 

On Linux everything is bad. I'm not kidding. Everything is bad.

• std::async is the same as thread spawning.
• The Windows thread pool is not available. 
• The Push Pool isn't much better than thread spawning.
• Cilk Plus reeks of the same overhead that kills it on Windows.
• Cilk Plus is deprecated and has been removed from GCC.
• GCC doesn't support TBB out-of-box.

Multi-threaded computations on Linux are roughly 5 - 10% slower than on Windows. But single-threaded computations are within 1%. So it's not like the code is slow on Linux. It's just that parallelization simply sucks on Linux for some reason. This is same regardless of whether you're spawning threads or reusing them.

"

 

Hope that things have changed for the better with Linux since last update, though...

 

Now we can go back to kiddie-computing "C64-vs-the_universe" syndrome. ?

I cannot really follow you. My experience is quite the reverse. If you need a professional system, Windows has a couple of serious problems. The network stack is slow, and has a huge overhead. The RIO system is a tad better, but still slower than what you get from sophisticated hardware like Mellanox (now NVidia) cards on Linux.

Graphics rendering is slow on Windows - DirectX is slow, nothing compared to YUV overlays on Linux. CPU isolation does not even exist on Windows if you really need the last bit of performance. I do not see that "multithreaded is slower" on Linux either. Actually, quite the reverse. Windows semaphores and the kernel overhead associated with them is rather awful.

Windows is ok for desktop users, but as server os, it is too rigid and too limited.

[youxia]

1 hour ago, Faicuai said:

A good dosis of reality will help us keep our feet on the ground:

 

 

At the desktop, basically no one gives a flying f_k for Linux and its incoherent genealogy.  

 

It is Apple's OS the one gaining ground...

 

 

Ummm...you are aware that the pink, flatlined line represents Apple OS? If this according to you is "gaining ground" you need to brush up on your basic chart reading.

 

It's like I said earlier: Mac OS is a few points higher than in the Nineties. In 1991 it had 11.2 market share, the peak for the era. Then it went really low (because of these PC clones you hate so much) and bounced back thanks to the global ipad/iphone craze which brought the brand back into the spotlight. Before that, to borrow your elegant phrase, "nobody gave a flying f_k" about it.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20070315100044/http://www.pegasus3d.com/total_share.html

[ivop]

18 minutes ago, thorfdbg said:

I cannot really follow you. My experience is quite the reverse. If you need a professional system, Windows has a couple of serious problems. The network stack is slow, and has a huge overhead. The RIO system is a tad better, but still slower than what you get from sophisticated hardware like Mellanox (now NVidia) cards on Linux.

Graphics rendering is slow on Windows - DirectX is slow, nothing compared to YUV overlays on Linux. CPU isolation does not even exist on Windows if you really need the last bit of performance. I do not see that "multithreaded is slower" on Linux either. Actually, quite the reverse. Windows semaphores and the kernel overhead associated with them is rather awful.

Yes, most of the times it's the opposite:

 

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=2990wx-linwin-scale&num=1

 

18 minutes ago, thorfdbg said:

Windows is ok for desktop users, but as server os, it is too rigid and too limited.

And scales horribly.  Top-500 Super Computers. Check the OS (family) statistics. It's 100% Linux. 500/500.

 

https://www.top500.org/statistics/list/