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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: microsoft windows on Fri, 20 August 2010, 18:30:42

Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 20 August 2010, 18:30:42
As of now, I am using my Gateway2000 with Windows NT 4.0 and Internet Explorer 6.

RAM usage: 42mb
CPU clock: 200 Mhz
CPU usage: Average: 12%

What's your system taking up when you're posting here? Is there anything running in the background? What browser and operating system are you using? I'm interested.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 20 August 2010, 19:05:30
I just went into Task Manager and looked at the RAM usage and averaged out the CPU usage readings.

Here's a screen shot if it helps.
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12218&stc=1&d=1282349088)
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12219&stc=1&d=1282349334)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Fri, 20 August 2010, 19:12:46
Q9550 running Vista
1% 2.49GB
(I've got other stuff running... Steam, Pidgin, MSE, SuperAntiSpyware, Logitech Setpoint, MagicISO, AutoHotKey)


Athlon XP 2600+ running Ubuntu 10.04
8% 420MB
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Fri, 20 August 2010, 19:18:31
Quote from: ripster;215167
0% sounds better.  Mine must be faster.


CPU COCK FIGHT.


LinX says 45GFLOPS biatch.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 20 August 2010, 19:25:04
Your CPU's could beat the crap out of my Pentium.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Superfluous Parentheses on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:01:15
If your OS doesn't isn't using pretty much all RAM while running, you're relying on disk operations way too much. RAM is there anyway, use it for disc caching and **** like that.

For instance, of my 2 Gb of RAM, ~ 1.5 Gb is disk cache at the moment and ~ 50 Mb is free (that is, totally unused).

cat /proc/meminfo:
MemTotal:        2056880 kB
MemFree:           56416 kB
Buffers:           13972 kB
Cached:          1456992 kB
SwapCached:         2120 kB
Active:           981496 kB
Inactive:         938716 kB
Active(anon):     246104 kB
Inactive(anon):   205496 kB
Active(file):     735392 kB
Inactive(file):   733220 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
HighTotal:       1173748 kB
HighFree:           2976 kB
LowTotal:         883132 kB
LowFree:           53440 kB
SwapTotal:       9775544 kB
SwapFree:        9764128 kB
Dirty:             24368 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:        447380 kB
Mapped:            44260 kB
Shmem:              2352 kB
Slab:              43636 kB
SReclaimable:      33960 kB
SUnreclaim:         9676 kB
KernelStack:        1896 kB
PageTables:         3024 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:    10803984 kB
Committed_AS:     871096 kB
VmallocTotal:     122880 kB
VmallocUsed:       61544 kB
VmallocChunk:      25140 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       4096 kB
DirectMap4k:       12280 kB
DirectMap4M:      892928 kB

See http://unixfoo.blogspot.com/2008/02/know-about-procmeminfo.html
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: iMav on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:16:32
Posting this with my mid-2009, 13.3" MacBook Pro.  2.26Ghz Core2Duo, 8GB RAM, 500GB hdd (7200rpm).

Resource usage while posting doesn't seem all that interesting.  How about a geekbench (http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/) score?

Here's mine (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/280952) while posting to geekhack.

Here's mine (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/280954) with nothing else running.  (I wonder if my i7 laptop can top it?)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:22:31
Not particularly comprehensive. No GPU benchmark for instance. And I prefer LinPack based programs for CPU benching. But ok.
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/280957
5934
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:25:05
I'm running on my 300GL at 666 Mhz. Satan inside!
Using around 200 MB of RAM, paging 150. Firefox.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Superfluous Parentheses on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:29:56
By the way, my Android phone shows about 30 Mb out of ~ 260 Mb used for programs (not cache etc) while browsing this site.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: iMav on Fri, 20 August 2010, 20:32:04
i7 laptop scores a 5219:
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/280961

Not bad.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Oqsy on Fri, 20 August 2010, 22:02:41
mah iphone load it are fastr wif mah appz and such az!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Fri, 20 August 2010, 23:39:49
2.2ghz http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=281012
1ghz http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=281014

apparently AMD is the way to go if you want to sharpen images it blew the pants off of ripsters intel lol
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: British on Wed, 25 August 2010, 11:41:36
This site is weird...
7099 - http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282732

That's with Foobar2k playing in the back and Firefox 3.6.8 with 191 tabs (though only a dozen loaded, gotta love BarTab).
Oh and of course I'm not gonna pay for this, so it doesn't take into account my 64bit-ness (I guess there's a whole lot of us).
Bleh.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:21:23
Quote from: D-EJ915;215231
2.2ghz http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=281012
1ghz http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=281014

apparently AMD is the way to go if you want to sharpen images it blew the pants off of ripsters intel lol


Well, for Internet browsing, anything over 100Mhz is enough.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:25:06
Quote from: ripster;216471
Damn, I knew my aging rig would be beaten soon.  I'm still waiting to go 8 core before upgrading my lowly 3.6Ghz Q6700 - AVCHD video editing would be the only real app that needs it though.

And I refuse to go water cooled.  Those OCN people are weirder than the Vintage Computing guys.


8 Cores won't do anything for you rippy, consumer software isn't programmed to handle it.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:26:20
Quote from: microsoft windows;216483
Well, for Internet browsing, anything over 100Mhz is enough.


Yes, but I find you need at least 1600MHz to watch 360p video smoothly, and 2200MHz helps if it's 480p.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:30:41
Quote from: ripster;216489
I worship at the altar of Adobe.

So you must be a freemason then?
(http://www.serialconsign.com/images/2007/07/photoshop%20v1.png)

EDIT:

Quote from: ripster;216489
Unlike IBM they still support the PC business.

You can still buy a System X tower from IBM and deck it out as a PC. You can get a fairly decent one for $2000.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:39:57
Quote from: ripster;216494
Probably slower than my current PC.  I'll wait.


Considering they can hold two CPUs, I'd vouch they're faster for processing. Two processors are better than one. Especially two quad core processors.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 12:51:16
Depends on what software you are running.

Knowing IBM, $2,000 probably buys you a low end model with a single CPU...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: keyboardlover on Wed, 25 August 2010, 13:37:33
Quote from: ripster;216489
I worship at the altar of Adobe.

Unlike IBM they still support the PC business.

Try getting support from them when u try to integrate their software with yours...had a lot of headaches with that in the past...

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Wed, 25 August 2010, 14:56:49
Workbench 1.3
Fully multitasking OS on:
7.14MHz CPU
512kB RAM

WIN!

:)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Wed, 25 August 2010, 15:03:03
Were you posting on the forum on that machine?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 25 August 2010, 16:26:58
Quote from: ch_123;216506
Depends on what software you are running.

Knowing IBM, $2,000 probably buys you a low end model with a single CPU...


Hey how did you guess? =p
Well my theory was buy the lowest model, chuck out the single processor IBM puts in, and put two high end ones in yourself for cheap. You'd have to buy a heatsink of course. Probably will be more than the processor lol.

It comes with 2 GB of RAM, so, you'd only need two more for something decent.

So that's a way to get IBM quality, for half the price... if you don't want to buy used.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Wed, 25 August 2010, 16:48:17
I'd just rather not buy it but find it in the computer garbage at work.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 17:07:31
Cool benchmarking site.  See this is why I need an i7, my systems are all around 2500.  Sucks. sigh
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 17:10:57
Quote from: EverythingIBM;216632
Hey how did you guess? =p
Well my theory was buy the lowest model, chuck out the single processor IBM puts in, and put two high end ones in yourself for cheap. You'd have to buy a heatsink of course. Probably will be more than the processor lol.

It comes with 2 GB of RAM, so, you'd only need two more for something decent.

So that's a way to get IBM quality, for half the price... if you don't want to buy used.


A machine that is intended for single CPU configurations only will only have a single socket motherboard. IBM being IBM, you can bet that the case is designed in such a way that a twin socket motherboard cannot be inserted. The thing may well not have any PCI-E 16x slots for a graphics card. Some models may not even have any sort of graphics capability at all.

The things that make IBM servers high quality compared with other brands are irrelevant if you are using it as a desktop PC.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 17:30:41
My highest result was with my gateway 141xl, which has a t8300 in it for about 2600.  I have 3 desktops with c2d's at the same frequency of 2.4 and all got less.  My most powerful relative system with the best memory and running a gtx 260 got the worst result of the 4 units of the same generation.  How is that?  I guess cause it's running windows 7 and the others are xp... hmm

Pretty interesting.  Here's the same configuration as my my p5n-e sli mobo with the same processor that's been oc'd.  

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/205646

Mine is about 2300 right now, my lowest score.  Suppose I should oc it....
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 19:36:29
Posting this on my oqo 1+.  This is the lowest power unit I currently have in regular operation.  Anything lower than this I have mothballed.

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282878 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282878)

This is the unit I built my wireless minitouch for.  Really love using it occasionally, and my ultimate goal was to build a wearable pc with it, but it really gets too hot to do that unfortunately.

It's got 512mb and 1000 mhz transmeta crusoe processor, so relatively still pretty powerful.

It's great for doing thumbnail sketches on since it has a wacom penabled tablet in it.  

It's still I believe the smallest, and most powerful full Windows pc ever made since the oqo 2 was a significant size increase.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 19:46:38
Pretty interesting:  

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=oqo (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=oqo)

My oqo 1+ bench's roughly the same as the via oqo 2 processor.  Woulda never thought that.

I love how the benchmark called it a oqo zepto.  I've never seen these units called Zepto anywhere before.  Wonder where it came from.  Reminds me of the fallout 3 pip boy kinda. lol

Interesting:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/zepto-computers-files-for-bankruptcy/ (http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/zepto-computers-files-for-bankruptcy/)

They used the same font that the oqo used.  I wonder if they actually manufactured the mobos for the oqo.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 21:48:05
my Sony U3 with a 933MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282929
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Phaedrus2129 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 22:09:59
Quote from: ch_123;216662
A machine that is intended for single CPU configurations only will only have a single socket motherboard. IBM being IBM, you can bet that the case is designed in such a way that a twin socket motherboard cannot be inserted. The thing may well not have any PCI-E 16x slots for a graphics card. Some models may not even have any sort of graphics capability at all.

The things that make IBM servers high quality compared with other brands are irrelevant if you are using it as a desktop PC.


Like the fact that if a CPU core fails a redundant CPU core activates in its place and shoots off an email to IBM customer service so they can come over and replace it.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 25 August 2010, 22:19:34
Hah, not on their x86 machines...

Stuff like hot-swappable fans and fancy administration/diagnostics are as good as it gets on x86. Fancier stuff is reserved for POWER and Z10 mainframes.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Thu, 26 August 2010, 00:12:39
Quote from: ch_123;216662
A machine that is intended for single CPU configurations only will only have a single socket motherboard. IBM being IBM, you can bet that the case is designed in such a way that a twin socket motherboard cannot be inserted. The thing may well not have any PCI-E 16x slots for a graphics card. Some models may not even have any sort of graphics capability at all.

The things that make IBM servers high quality compared with other brands are irrelevant if you are using it as a desktop PC.


They do have slots for two CPUs (go look at some PDFs), and they do have graphics capability, although yes, probably not x16.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Thu, 26 August 2010, 00:54:51
Quote from: microsoft windows;216573
Were you posting on the forum on that machine?

YES! :D



....




no... :(




(But it should work... I'll just have to find the hammers and the nails first.)

Update:
I'm quite certain that it will be possible from my Amiga600. WB2.05, 7.14MHz mc68000 and 2MB RAM.
I used to be able to get online with that computer and download stuff from Aminet with a Lynx clone browser. I'll just have to get it out from the basement and then I can test if it's possible.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Thu, 26 August 2010, 06:36:04
Quote from: chimera15;216673
My highest result was with my gateway 141xl, which has a t8300 in it for about 2600.  I have 3 desktops with c2d's at the same frequency of 2.4 and all got less.  My most powerful relative system with the best memory and running a gtx 260 got the worst result of the 4 units of the same generation.  How is that?  I guess cause it's running windows 7 and the others are xp... hmm

Pretty interesting.  Here's the same configuration as my my p5n-e sli mobo with the same processor that's been oc'd.  

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/205646

Mine is about 2300 right now, my lowest score.  Suppose I should oc it....


Running this on a heavily loaded (4GB and I'm swapping for Christ's sake) linux work machine (currently ubarftu):

Quote
 Processor:                 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E6550  @ 2.33GHz
  Processor ID:              GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 11


Plain ol' sata drive and a Quadro NVS 290. I don't really think that matters though, this bench is mostly CPU and memory(bandwidth - amount doesnt really matter).


Quote
Overall Geekbench Score:      3351 |||||||||||||

edit:

after scoping out the linked OC'd machine, I see the issue:


his mem/stream numbers:
Quote
Memory   Memory performance   1981
Stream   Memory bandwidth performance   1244


mine:

Quote
Memory Score:                 3482 |||||||||||||
Stream Score:                 2300 |||||||||

how did that happen? We, it seems linux has a better implementation of C, for one:

his:

Quote
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar   4466
 
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar   2687
 
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar   1093
 
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar   738
 
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar   924

mine:

Quote
Memory
  Read Sequential
    single-threaded scalar    3739 ||||||||||||||
  Write Sequential
    single-threaded scalar    3572 ||||||||||||||
 Stdlib Allocate
    single-threaded scalar    2024 ||||||||
  Stdlib Write
    single-threaded scalar    2726 ||||||||||
  Stdlib Copy
    single-threaded scalar    5349 |||||||||||||||||||||

well then ...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 06:47:23
Quote from: D-EJ915;216731
my Sony U3 with a 933MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/282929


It's interesting that your sony uses the same processor as the oqo and the Compaq tc1000, but seems to be underclocked by about 75 mhz or so.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ricercar on Thu, 26 August 2010, 13:54:02
85 MHz  - NEC RISC VR4111 processor
16 MB RAM

Fujitsu Teampad 7500. I can surf the web without Flash for $475 less than your iPad.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Thu, 26 August 2010, 14:20:53
Quote from: zmurf;216770
YES! :D



....




no... :(




(But it should work... I'll just have to find the hammers and the nails first.)

Update:
I'm quite certain that it will be possible from my Amiga600. WB2.05, 7.14MHz mc68000 and 2MB RAM.
I used to be able to get online with that computer and download stuff from Aminet with a Lynx clone browser. I'll just have to get it out from the basement and then I can test if it's possible.


MrA500 uses his Amiga 500 to do geekhack posts.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 14:41:18
Lot of people on that site have benched their ipads and iphones:

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=iphone&commit=Search

It's interesting that the newer ones have about the same processing power as my oqo.  I wonder what it would take to get windows running on them.


lol http://gizmodo.com/5523905/masochist-runs-windows-xp-on-an-ipad (http://gizmodo.com/5523905/masochist-runs-windows-xp-on-an-ipad)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Thu, 26 August 2010, 14:45:49
Quote from: chimera15;216984
Lot of people on that site have benched their ipads and iphones:

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/search?q=iphone&commit=Search

It's interesting that the newer ones have about the same processing power as my oqo.  I wonder what it would take to get windows running on them.


(http://media.techeblog.com/images/apple_ipad_windows95.jpg)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 14:56:35
Yeah, 95 wouldn't run the painting apps I want to run though...

Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 18:10:32
Quote from: EverythingIBM;216975
MrA500 uses his Amiga 500 to do geekhack posts.


Oh good... a chance for me to show off. Yes, this post was done with an Amiga 500.

I think I'm using around 6Mb, but I could easily get that under 4Mb by using a lower screenmode.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 18:29:25
Quote from: mr_a500;217045
Oh good... a chance for me to show off. Yes, this post was done with an Amiga 500.

I think I'm using around 6Mb, but I could easily get that under 4Mb by using a lower screenmode.


Wow, how do you access the web?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Thu, 26 August 2010, 18:39:50
Quote from: chimera15;217056
Wow, how do you access the web?


He uses linux (for youtube) or BeOS for some things: on the great intellistation.

But you really don't need much power for typical internet tasks.

For a long time I used my 300PL even though it was "outdated" even back then (mainly because my dad wouldn't get me a new computer), and that thing has 200 Mhz! I probably only had 64 mb of RAM (now I got the lovely 384), but a lot of things are still doable on old computers -- as long as the software is compatible.

Text writing, most internet stuff, music, pixel art, games, and all of that fun stuff can be done old old computers. It's probably a smarter idea as they suck less power.

Although I do need computational power for an audio rig (and 4 GB of RAM lol).
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 19:52:40
Quote from: chimera15;217056
Wow, how do you access the web?


With the Amiga 500, I use a 56K modem, MiamiDX TCP/IP and IBrowse web browser. Unfortunately, A500 Ethernet adapters are rare and expensive. On the Amiga 3000 I'm using for this post, I use a USB Ethernet adapter (only 99¢!), connected to high speed internet cable modem.

The Amiga 3000 is 16Mhz.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: typo on Thu, 26 August 2010, 19:53:57
the original pentium 133mhz could run win95 and use the internet. well, probably not with the content that is on most sites now. of course the internet was designed for 33.6kbps back then.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 19:55:51
Could you use the modem to dial into a modem on a system with ethernet, and use the latter as a server for the former?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Thu, 26 August 2010, 20:14:14
Quote from: chimera15;216816
It's interesting that your sony uses the same processor as the oqo and the Compaq tc1000, but seems to be underclocked by about 75 mhz or so.

The U3 is a much earlier machine, the U1 which is the earlier model was 867MHz both in 2002.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Thu, 26 August 2010, 20:17:24
17.7 MHz IBM 7490 (S/390 processor,) using 8876 kiB storage.

Edit: And... I didn't know how to work with multiline text fields in this browser.

Hardware has 128 MiB RAM available, and uses a Pentium 90 with 32 MiB RAM and OS/2 as an I/O processor.

Software on the mainframe side is VM/ESA V2 R4.0 and Charlotte V2.1 as the web browser.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 01:08:11
Quote from: EverythingIBM;216975
MrA500 uses his Amiga 500 to do geekhack posts.

Yes... As I mentioned before, It should be possible. But I have a feeling that his A500 is somewhat expanded. But I went down to the basement yesterday and dug up my A600. That computer is almost entirely unexpanded. The only expansion it have is 1MB of extra chipram. I going to try to set it up over the weekend and see if I can post from it. It should be possible. Again as I mentioned before, I used to use that computer to browse the web. So posting at a vBulletin based forum shouldn't be a problem.

Quote from: mr_a500;217045
Oh good... a chance for me to show off. Yes, this post was done with an Amiga 500.
I think I'm using around 6Mb, but I could easily get that under 4Mb by using a lower screenmode.
Ok I didn't see this... So it is expanded..


I noticed last evening that the hard drive on my A600 had died... so I'll have to reinstall it with WB2.05. I will use AmiTCP together with a Lynx clone for net access. Fortunately on the A600 there is a PCMCIA port... so I'll just use the PCMCIA card from my A1200 to connect.

Post will hopefully come in a couple of days.... :)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 02:01:37
One of the EEs at work built a "webserver" using a 4Mhz PIC, 9V battery, and 1GB CF card.  It works because apparently all you really need to service is HTML and FTP, it's too gutless to do any flash or scripts or other fancy stuff.  He claims it's superior for (his) mission-critical personal website because hackers can't exploit OS vulnerabilities.
 
If that works as a webserver, then an Amiga should be plenty macho to run a webclient browser.  Sort of.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 02:16:08
When I'm thinking about it... I spoke with a person at Breakpoint 2005 (http://breakpoint.untergrund.net/2005/) who used a Commodore 64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64) with a MMC Replay (http://www.vesalia.de/e_mmcreplay.htm) and a RR-Net (http://www.vesalia.de/e_rrnet.htm) to post threads in www.vintage-computer.com (http://www.vintage-computer.com/). Which is a vBulletin based forum.

He used Contiki-OS (http://www.sics.se/contiki/) as operating system and used Contikis internal web browser to post with.

So that's it! You need a MOS6510 CPU running at almost 1MHz and 64kB of RAM to post at this forum... :)


(I actually own a C64 and a MMC Replay... I'll just have to get hold of a RR-Net unit and I can test this myself... :D )
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Fri, 27 August 2010, 02:26:47
Quote from: zmurf;217151
When I'm thinking about it... I spoke with a person at Breakpoint 2005 (http://breakpoint.untergrund.net/2005/) who used a Commodore 64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64) with a MMC Replay (http://www.vesalia.de/e_mmcreplay.htm) and a RR-Net (http://www.vesalia.de/e_rrnet.htm) to post threads in www.vintage-computer.com (http://www.vintage-computer.com/). Which is a vBulletin based forum.

He used Contiki-OS (http://www.sics.se/contiki/) as operating system and used Contikis internal web browser to post with.

So that's it! You need a MOS6510 CPU running at almost 1MHz and 64kB of RAM to post at this forum... :)


(I actually own a C64 and a MMC Replay... I'll just have to get hold of a RR-Net unit and I can test this myself... :D )


I still need to get various cables for my C64 to be used with the TV. Also need to get some RCA sega genesis cables -- I assume that'll give me way more clarity for a picture.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 02:33:39
I've played with projects that turn $20 MCU boards into fully functional C64 or Apple ][+ computers ... the machines are pathetically simple today, 65xx/Z80 CPUs @ ~1-2MHz.  Not enough RAM to store this page.  Such low resolution that this page would take about 50 screens anyhow.  The only "hard" part in building these toys can be finding the original ROM code, then finding any software titles which have survived the ages.
 
As fantastic as those machines were back then, I recall that a topheavy BBS could make them struggle.  I seriously doubt they could handle a typical GH thread full of hyperlinks and minor graphics.  Then again, there's little reason not to emulate them with faster CPUs and greater memory.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 03:59:35
Quote from: Konrad;217153
I've played with projects that turn $20 MCU boards into fully functional C64 or Apple ][+ computers ... the machines are pathetically simple today, 65xx/Z80 CPUs @ ~1-2MHz.  Not enough RAM to store this page.  Such low resolution that this page would take about 50 screens anyhow.  The only "hard" part in building these toys can be finding the original ROM code, then finding any software titles which have survived the ages.
You can always buy a C-One (http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one/). A fully reconfigurable FPGA computer. With the ARM expansion you can download firmware to make it act as a C64, A500, Apple ][ or anything you want really.

There is also a project called FPGA Arcade (http://www.fpgaarcade.com/) that makes pretty much the same thing. But to the FPGA Arcade there is a Minimig (http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=3) firmware core with AGA support (Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn4ZzLH6MpE )

Quote from: Konrad;217153
As fantastic as those machines were back then, I recall that a topheavy BBS could make them struggle.  I seriously doubt they could handle a typical GH thread full of hyperlinks and minor graphics.
But the thing is that the browsers on these small systems most of the time don't render all of the pages. Just enough data to make them usable. Most often you don't need all pictures and so on. Take Lynx (http://lynx.browser.org/) or Links (http://www.jikos.cz/~mikulas/links/) for example. That data wouldn't be any problem at all for a C64 to show.

These new, small and optimised browser is probably much better at showing text then the old modem consoles were. I remember switching from an original modem console to one that was designed to show BBS material, and just that change made a huge difference.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 05:18:07
Quote from: zmurf
You can always buy a ... fully reconfigurable FPGA computer ...
lol, the $20 controllers I was referring to are FPGAs, CPLDs, ARMs, PICs, AVRs, Atmels, take your pick - any of these parts is huge overkill. Admittedly, some workarounds are needed (to emulate floppy drives, etc) and some special hardware cannot always be perfectly duplicated (C64 audio, for example). My "PDA" (previously a Nintendo DS) is now simultaneously an Apple][+/][e and C64 (with PS/2 keyboard connector, stylus touchscreen, and 2GB SD card interface).
 
Incidentally, it's an awe-inspiring realization that the equivalent of my ~1000 floppy disks full of software now all fit on a single half-empty SD card.
 
Quote from: zmurf
These new, small and optimised browser is probably much better at showing text then the old modem consoles were.
I think you're right. Software is obviously more capable now, especially on ancient machines that now pack then-inconceivable amounts of memory and speed increases. Software has gotten sloppy these days, though ... back then every byte and every clock you could squeeze mattered, small code runs faster.
I suppose I could view webpages on my "C64" ... but in my mind the final result just doesn't justify the programming effort involved. It'd be cheaper and easier to buy a junked 486 than build an FPGA board.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 05:38:46
Quote from: Konrad;217171

I suppose I could view webpages on my "C64" ... but in my mind the final result just doesn't justify the programming effort involved. It'd be cheaper and easier to buy a junked 486 than build an FPGA board.

Or you could just use a modern computer... And if you necciserily want to run old stuff... use an emulator. (As you do on your PDA... and I do on my mobile phone (UAE4Droid is really capable.)) ;)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 06:01:08
lol, my "PDA" is the result of
1) hating stupid Nintendo/Gameboy titles,
2) noticing that - with rebuilt firmware and a few minor changes - the hardware would support two separate ancient simple computers (which each offered hundreds of game titles), and
3) for the hell of it, a moderately challenging hack project at the time
 
A modern phone would likely be more powerful, but the DS packed a pair of ARMs, twin displays (with touchscreen), and other hardware that didn't require rebuilding.
A phone screen and numpad doesn't seem as useful, though it could easily be done.  Actual processor capabilities aren't really relevant because of the magnitude of overkill.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 06:40:15
Quote from: Konrad;217149
One of the EEs at work built a "webserver" using a 4Mhz PIC, 9V battery, and 1GB CF card.


Oh yeah? Check out this Atari 2600 webserver (http://www.humanclock.com/atariserver.php). :wink:
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 06:52:26
Quote from: typo;217082
the original pentium 133mhz could run win95 and use the internet. well, probably not with the content that is on most sites now. of course the internet was designed for 33.6kbps back then.

Yeah when the web was first developed around 95 I had an old compaq 386 laptop with a black and white screen.  I was in Norway at the time, and bought Windows  95 at a store there, and got www service set up there which was quite a task in a foreign country.  For a while they had text only web, and then finally a few months later they had the first browsers.   That old 386 was pretty awesome back then, but it died on me.   I actually bought this computer at Fry's and it was under warranty, and they replaced it with a 486 which I still have for free. lol  Fry's was awesome back then.

Heh, similar model.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Compaq-Vintage-Contura-Aero-425-Laptop-/320579396183?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item4aa4056257 (http://cgi.ebay.com/Compaq-Vintage-Contura-Aero-425-Laptop-/320579396183?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item4aa4056257)

I suppose with these old laptops it'd be possible to get a pcmcia lan card for them and windows95 and they'd be able to post here.  4mb of ram or so.  Would take forever though. lol
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 07:00:29
That Atari webserver is a truly awe-inspiring piece of engineering.  Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same.
 
I'm not particularly confident that 128 bytes (actually less, if any programs are being run) is sufficient to serve much web content ... the average SMS message can hold more ... but it clearly works. Missile Command is an excellent alternative to GH, provided a decent trackball is about.
 
Here's another laptop (http://benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop) worth looking at.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 07:26:50
Quote from: chimera15;217203
when the web was first developed around 95
wasn't graphical web officially released in late -92? I remember using Mosaic on my Amiga in late -93 (I have a clear memory of using a WWW application on the Amiga some days before Christmas in -93. It must have been Mosaic.).

First time I connected to the internet was in -91 through a BBS who routed me through his connection so I could read and post things on Usenet in real time. :)

Quote from: Konrad;217205
That Atari webserver is a truly awe-inspiring piece of engineering.  Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same.
You still have a webserver in Contiki wich run on the C64... I'll guess that is as "Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same." :)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 07:30:21
Quote from: Konrad;217205
That Atari webserver is a truly awe-inspiring piece of engineering.  Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same.

You still have a webserver in Contiki wich run on the C64... I'll guess that is as "Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same." :)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 07:45:33
Quote from: zmurf;217209
wasn't graphical web officially released in late -92? I remember using Mosaic on my Amiga in late -93 (I have a clear memory of using a WWW application on the Amiga some days before Christmas in -93. It must have been Mosaic.).

First time I connected to the internet was in -91 through a BBS who routed me through his connection so I could read and post things on Usenet in real time. :)


You still have a webserver in Contiki wich run on the C64... I'll guess that is as "Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same." :)

Yeah you're right, I guess it was just in Norway that I actually needed to access it in 95, so finally figured out what it was, cause I was cut off from Genie at that point.  I guess Mosiac was developed in 93, but maybe Norway didn't get it till 95 or something, at least not as a commercial/distributable product, but my memory is pretty bad for specific things like that as well.  I wonder what the deal was with the service providers back then as well, as I really had to ask a lot of questions at the phone company to find out who to talk to to get the service.  I don't think I ever had a dos version of mosiac though... Maybe in windows 3.1?  I'm pretty sure I didn't get it till I got windows 95....  It might have been a windows 3.1 application though...maybe that's where I got confused.

Yeah according to wikipedia Mosiac was first released in december of 1993, so basically early 1994 for Windows, which means it would have been a windows 3.1 release.  Windows 95 didn't come out till late 1995.



 I definitely remember dialing into a text based internet, in some capacity before using a browser though in 1995, although not sure of what the specifics of that were anymore.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 07:55:33
Quote from: Konrad;217205
That Atari webserver is a truly awe-inspiring piece of engineering.  Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same.
 
I'm not particularly confident that 128 bytes (actually less, if any programs are being run) is sufficient to serve much web content ... the average SMS message can hold more ... but it clearly works. Missile Command is an excellent alternative to GH, provided a decent trackball is about.
 
Here's another laptop (http://benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop) worth looking at.


Neat. That Atari 2600 webserver is a joke, by the way. That makes it not so frightening.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:10:32
I seriously contemplated the technical possibilities inherent in turning an Atari-era piece of junk into a serviceable webserver (of sorts).  That's the real joke.  And what's frightening is that I think it might even be possible (though it would use about 10,000 Atari's worth of hardware complexity, ie: one or two chips, to make it work).
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:24:08
Here's a real C64 webserver: http://58.6.118.18/

I didn't know there's also a C64 Twitter client. I'd never use Twitter, but it's interesting that it's possible to use it from a C64.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:28:15
I think even the sorry poor bastards from loser third world countries have already made the transition from C64s to something a little more modern. At least Pentium-IIIs running Win9x.
 
"Microservers" (for lack of a better term) seem more like a tinkering project "just because I can" sort of thing ... the people who experiment with this concept can already access vastly superior computing power.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:46:17
Quote from: zmurf;217209
wasn't graphical web officially released in late -92? I remember using Mosaic on my Amiga in late -93 (I have a clear memory of using a WWW application on the Amiga some days before Christmas in -93. It must have been Mosaic.).

First time I connected to the internet was in -91 through a BBS who routed me through his connection so I could read and post things on Usenet in real time. :)


You still have a webserver in Contiki wich run on the C64... I'll guess that is as "Frightening, worrying, dismaying, yet awesome all the same." :)

Obviously the internet is different from the web.  The net was developed and in place as early as 89 or 90, and obviously earlier if you were government or military.  I was sending emails in 91 from my first failed college attempt dorm, where they had a couple old macs set up and hooked into the net.   When I came home from that miserable experience I joined genie in late 91 or early 92 and had access to email from the net that way, as well of course dialing into various bbs's and such.  The web wasn't really up, and certainly not popular till 94 or 95 at all, even in America.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:54:50
Quote from: mr_a500;217081
With the Amiga 500, I use a 56K modem, MiamiDX TCP/IP and IBrowse web browser. Unfortunately, A500 Ethernet adapters are rare and expensive. On the Amiga 3000 I'm using for this post, I use a USB Ethernet adapter (only 99¢!), connected to high speed internet cable modem.

The Amiga 3000 is 16Mhz.

Ah, I thought you would be using dial up...  What isp still has dial in nodes?  Aol?  You still pay for a dial up isp?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:58:56
Quote from: chimera15;217243
Ah, I thought you would be using dial up...  What isp still has dial in nodes?  Aol?


I used a free dial up number in California (thankfully, I have free long distance to the US). I used to have a dial up ISP, but they converted to Microsoft servers (right after "partnering" with Microsoft, coincidentally) and totally ****ed everything up for non-Microsoft computers.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Fri, 27 August 2010, 08:59:40
Quote from: chimera15;217238
Obviously the internet is different from the web.  The net was developed and in place as early as 89 or 90, and obviously earlier if you were government or military.


if you count  ARPANET universities have had internet since the -70ths ... :)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Fri, 27 August 2010, 09:42:02
Oh, hey, now I figured out how to make the text field multi-
line. Turns out, you just need to hit enter on the text fiel
d, and it expands.
Anyway, I've got a copy of Spectrum Internet Suite on its wa
y... that way, I'll be able to post from a IIGS running GS/O
S 6.0.1, a 65816 running at any speed I want between 2.6 and
 12.5 MHz, and 5 MiB RAM.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Fri, 27 August 2010, 19:13:16
Quote from: chimera15;217243
Ah, I thought you would be using dial up...  What isp still has dial in nodes?  Aol?  You still pay for a dial up isp?
a lot of ISPs have them in case the other stuff goes down, I know cox communications does down here in southeast va
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 27 August 2010, 19:26:27
There's still plenty of folks using dial up. A guy I know just got hooked up to the Internet and he's got dial-up.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Fri, 27 August 2010, 23:04:16
Quote from: microsoft windows;217459
There's still plenty of folks using dial up. A guy I know just got hooked up to the Internet and he's got dial-up.


I used dial-up for a long time, until a $60 bill came in the mail for overuse (idiotic considering it was outdated by then). That was around the time youtube wasn't owned by google yet.

So, no more dial-up for me.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mike on Sat, 28 August 2010, 14:57:06
Quote from: chimera15;217238
Obviously the internet is different from the web.  The net was developed and in place as early as 89 or 90, and obviously earlier if you were government or military.  I was sending emails in 91 from my first failed college attempt dorm, where they had a couple old macs set up and hooked into the net.   When I came home from that miserable experience I joined genie in late 91 or early 92 and had access to email from the net that way, as well of course dialing into various bbs's and such.  The web wasn't really up, and certainly not popular till 94 or 95 at all, even in America.


The DNS first showed up in 1983 and the first .com (symbolics.com) was registered in March 1985. The Internet pretty much dates from then.

As for the Web, I setup my first web server in 1992; about a year before the University I worked for had an Internet connection. At the time there were many different 'distributed information systems' - Gopher, Web, MIT's TechInfo.

Mosaic (one of the earliest GUI browsers - Lynx, a text based browser was available earlier) was first released in 1993 and pretty much started the popularity of the Web.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: zmurf on Sun, 29 August 2010, 08:32:17
Quote from: mike;217665
The DNS first showed up in 1983 and the first .com (symbolics.com) was registered in March 1985. The Internet pretty much dates from then.

Naa!.. Everybody knows that the Internet was born in Japan the year 2001...

And that's a fact!

Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sun, 29 August 2010, 08:39:02
Quote from: D-EJ915;217451
a lot of ISPs have them in case the other stuff goes down, I know cox communications does down here in southeast va


Seriously?  You know we live probably right near each other? lol  What numbers?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sun, 29 August 2010, 11:43:13
Anyone know how to change the bios of a motherboard so that it's not an unknown name for a custom/homebuilt system when tested on geekbench?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 29 August 2010, 16:56:34
Quote from: chimera15;217864
Anyone know how to change the bios of a motherboard so that it's not an unknown name for a custom/homebuilt system when tested on geekbench?
If it's a socketed then you can easily swap the chip out with any pin-compatible PROM/EPROM part.
 
If it's an integrated EEPROM/Flash then you can (and probably should) just use software to rewrite it. You could manually desolder the part off the board, though there is then a risk of thermal damage and ESD corrupting the firmcode. Another chip (and/or socket to mount it) could then be installed.
 
Most modern PC mobos integrate the BIOS within the Southbridge/ICH component of the chipset, sometimes in the Winbond-style "Super I/O" chip. These parts are difficult to purchase individually, you'd likely need to salvage them from another mobo. Firmware is also encoded in other components: processors, RAM controllers, HDDs and ODDs, ethernet controllers, graphics cards, etc.
 
You can always remove the BIOS chip and replace it with a carrier board running a programmed MCU to emulate the BIOS; this is the most difficult but most versatile option. It might be easier to design an entire mobo from scratch than to reverse engineer one in this detail, although again there are difficulties in obtaining chipset parts which are not sold individually.
 
You might have better luck installing in-line devices which "stamp" unique hardware ID/characteristics onto any signals the machine sends to the outside world.  If your problems are OS-based (say, Windows thinks it's not genuine...) then there are any number of software workarounds - I don't want to get banned for dirty pirate talk so I'll just direct you to spend some time with google.
 
If your problems are being caused by a TPM or other encryption module then I don't think there's anything you can do. Serious EE hackers have defeated these systems, but I don't understand how.
 
Of course, you could always call tech support. ;)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: erricrice on Sun, 29 August 2010, 17:22:22
Well, I kinda missed the bandwagon on this one, but anyway:

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/284240


Yeah...I need some improvement in the memory department, kinda unbalanced.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Mon, 30 August 2010, 16:21:16
Those jerks on Geekbench didn't make a 16-bit version of their benchmark tester!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Ekaros on Mon, 30 August 2010, 17:13:07
Hmm, with pre-fetching of Windows 7 and stuff:
32% phsical memory sub 10% CPU 59 Processes...
More detailed junk:
Physical Memory (MB)
Total 8191(yep...)
Cached 5178
Available 5502
Free 683

Kernel Memory (MB)
Paged 338
nonpaged 31

System
Handles 23870
Threads 892
Processes 59
Up Time 1:04:04:04 (WIN?)
Commit (MB) 2831/8189

331 924K Firefox
138 624K Plugin Container For Firefox Is it only me or are softwares getting somewhat large?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Mon, 30 August 2010, 20:46:28
Quote from: erricrice;217986
Well, I kinda missed the bandwagon on this one, but anyway:

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/284240


Yeah...I need some improvement in the memory department, kinda unbalanced.


Dang, you got an 8000 with an i5? That's better than most 920 i7's I've seen? How'd you do that?  What's a GBT___ GBTUACPI?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Mon, 30 August 2010, 20:48:07
Quote from: Konrad;217978
If it's a socketed then you can easily swap the chip out with any pin-compatible PROM/EPROM part.
 
If it's an integrated EEPROM/Flash then you can (and probably should) just use software to rewrite it. You could manually desolder the part off the board, though there is then a risk of thermal damage and ESD corrupting the firmcode. Another chip (and/or socket to mount it) could then be installed.
 
Most modern PC mobos integrate the BIOS within the Southbridge/ICH component of the chipset, sometimes in the Winbond-style "Super I/O" chip. These parts are difficult to purchase individually, you'd likely need to salvage them from another mobo. Firmware is also encoded in other components: processors, RAM controllers, HDDs and ODDs, ethernet controllers, graphics cards, etc.
 
 
Of course, you could always call tech support. ;)

I gotta pull a chip?  I can't modify the bios flash file or something? lol

What software should I use? Would a hex editor work do you think?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Tue, 31 August 2010, 03:15:44
I prefer WinHex (http://www.winhex.com/), though any decent hex editor would work.  Most modern mobos use integrated flash firmware, though some models might use multiple chips or even sockets.  The mobo manufacturer's BIOS flash software is usually the best choice and avoids direct contact with the hardware.  You can always get generic flash software from Pheonix/Award or AMI, though it might not always work with any given board.
 
Modifying your firmware at the byte level is not trivial.  It contains critical BIOS code and data which provide the logical interface for the entire mobo chipset.  It contains the BIOS setup program and likely also contains megabytes of other software used for detection, diagnostics, and recovery.
 
You're unlikely to improve or add functionality unless you reverse engineer the entire mobo chipset and disassemble all the existing firmware code.  In fact, you're far more likely to kill or cripple your mobo.
 
The safest changes you can realistically expect to do would involve changing text strings and graphic images.  Many OEMs are paranoid bastards and employ checksums or other anti-tampering logic to prevent stuff like their copyright messages and part serial numbers from being altered.  What this means is that changing even a single innocuous byte could prevent the BIOS from loading, thus prevent the mobo from working.
 
Some OEMs provide software which will allow you to flash your own custom pre-boot images or text into the BIOS.  This might be good enough for your purpose.
 
SMBIOS editing/spoofing software is also available, a perhaps better alternative to actual BIOS flashing, though it can be tricky to use correctly.
 
Whatever you do, I recommend
- you disable all BIOS-level passwords before doing anything
- you backup your existing BIOS before continuing, then as always, actually confirm you can recover data from the backup before you move onward; you may need to reconfigure hardware jumpers or have a floppy drive (and disk)
- you make sure you're using the correct software for your particular BIOS and you follow the instructions carefully
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Tue, 31 August 2010, 10:15:46
In fairness, that sounds like an awful lot of work just so that some benchmark software picks up your motherboard brand...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Tue, 31 August 2010, 18:56:08
Yeah, different benchmark software would be a smarter choice.  You could extrapolate a score by comparison of your machine against others, using results from some other benchmark as a reference.
 
Of course, not being able to even run a benchmark on your machine is a compelling statement about how mismatched the technological magnitude might be.
 
In all fairness, geekbench is not a very well-established or popular benchmark anyhow, perhaps not even a particularly accurate one.  Better results - along with a more complete database of results to compare against - would be achieved using one of the ones listed here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(computing)).
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Tue, 31 August 2010, 19:25:11
There's always nbench (http://www.tux.org/~mayer/linux/bmark.html), which works across a rather wide array of platforms - I've even got a version that's compiled for RISC OS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Wed, 01 September 2010, 17:40:34
Any of you all know of a Windows 3.1 benchmark tester?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: erricrice on Wed, 01 September 2010, 22:38:05
Quote from: chimera15;218399
Dang, you got an 8000 with an i5? That's better than most 920 i7's I've seen? How'd you do that?  What's a GBT___ GBTUACPI?


I have absolutely no clue what that title is.  Probably choking on the Gigabyte motherboard given some other posts about this benchmark.

And yes, 8000+ is what you get once you hit 4 jiggabibbles.  That's a lot of jiggabibbles.

Anyway, my specs are:

i5 750 @ 4.0 GHz
4 GB GSkill 1600Mhz DDR3 (7-7-7-24)
GTX 260 216 Core 55nm
Gigabyte P55-UD3R
Seagate 1TB (3 platter)


Probably the last system I am going to ever have.  I only see reason to upgrade the hard drive once I fill this one, which probably won't be for a while yet.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Wed, 01 September 2010, 22:41:56
You'll likely end up getting an SSD ... then wondering why the hell you didn't do it years before.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Wed, 01 September 2010, 22:50:37
That's not zigmund froyd ... it's Santa Claus, merry xmas and patron saint of hookers.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Wed, 01 September 2010, 23:16:59
merry sexmas indeedy
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: erricrice on Fri, 03 September 2010, 16:55:34
Quote from: ripster;219063
8000 4GHz i5 750 versus my lowly 3.6 GHz Q6700 6129 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/280974)

Pics of Girls licking a Sigmund Freud lollypop remind me that there is more to life than Penis Envy.

I suppose.

But mine's still bigger.

(http://www.davinciinstitute.com/new/admin/content/FCKeditor/uploads/MinesBigger.jpg)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Brodie337 on Fri, 03 September 2010, 17:26:12
This post came from a 4.15GHz Phenom II 1055t hex core.

Thats more processing power than all of MW's computers combined, I'd think.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 03 September 2010, 17:43:42
I don't know. All of my computers would add up to 13.866 Ghz with 10.544GB of RAM. I think I've got you beat!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Fri, 03 September 2010, 20:21:12
Windows 95 on a 386? I like it!

Now you got to load on the flying toaster screen saver!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Fri, 03 September 2010, 21:12:57
Quote from: kishy;219703
Yeah, it's one of these (submodel 045, not all original however) (http://www.ps2project.org/index.php?title=PS/2_Model_56_%288556%29).

Would be running OS/2 (y'know, something worth bothering with) except I can't find a TCP/IP stack for 2.x.


Only 15 MB of RAM? You need something more like this (ohhh yeah, sadly I didn't get it on the internet, I put the bitmap on a floppy and then converted it to a PNG, from 900kb to 20!):
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12367&stc=1&d=1283566256)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sat, 04 September 2010, 09:31:14
I see you got it running in 640x480.

Don't forget to get that thing on the Internet though!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sat, 04 September 2010, 10:05:42
You guys worry me.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sat, 04 September 2010, 10:54:58
My laptop can run something like 300-400 instances of Windows 95 inside VMs.

So basically I can simulate MW's entire town using VMware...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sat, 04 September 2010, 11:29:57
Quote from: ch_123;219843

So basically I can simulate MW's entire town using VMware...


And I can simulate your whole city with my Gateway2000.
(http://www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk/learning/habitat/HABITAT4/simcity2.gif)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sat, 04 September 2010, 14:00:43
Quote from: kishy;219697
Complete with the authentic Windows 95 Paint inefficient file format, here ya go:

Show Image
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12364&stc=1&d=1283561303)


Show Image
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12365&stc=1&d=1283561303)


 Awesome.  I should load win95 on my 386 laptop I have. It's got even less ram I'm pretty sure. lol
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sat, 04 September 2010, 14:02:38
Quote from: microsoft windows;219858
And I can simulate your whole city with my Gateway2000.
Show Image
(http://www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk/learning/habitat/HABITAT4/simcity2.gif)

Wow, looks strange in color.  I used to play this, way back when, then later sim cities got so processor hungry.  I could barely run the last one on my p4.  I don't get why.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sat, 04 September 2010, 15:34:23
SC2000 is bloated and full of memory leaks, also plays dirty with Windows. It'll even lock an i7 if you let it run long enough, 64-bit protected OS notwithstanding.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:07:15
Quote from: Konrad;219924
SC2000 is bloated and full of memory leaks, also plays dirty with Windows. It'll even lock an i7 if you let it run long enough, 64-bit protected OS notwithstanding.


I know a guy who took some ancient Mac Performa, put Sim Tower on it, and let it run continiously for something like 1.5-2 years. Stuff like the date and the bank balance ran into integer overflow issues and got stuck as some crazy values, but the game still ran away.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:34:06
Quote from: ch_123;219843
My laptop can run something like 300-400 instances of Windows 95 inside VMs.

So basically I can simulate MW's entire town using VMware...


Actually, emulating windows 95 (in virtual PC) is so bloody slow, and there's no drivers for it. It's actually easier and faster just to run it natively. Games that change music (CD audio or MIDI tracks) will also have issues of hanging or long pauses when it changes due to not being a pentium 1 processor.

Quote from: ch_123;219932
I know a guy who took some ancient Mac Performa, put Sim Tower on it, and let it run continiously for something like 1.5-2 years. Stuff like the date and the bank balance ran into integer overflow issues and got stuck as some crazy values, but the game still ran away.


Wouldn't it just be easier to get something to make the game run ultra fast?

Quote from: Konrad;219924
SC2000 is bloated and full of memory leaks, also plays dirty with Windows. It'll even lock an i7 if you let it run long enough, 64-bit protected OS notwithstanding.


I never had issues with it.

Quote from: chimera15;219907
Wow, looks strange in color.  I used to play this, way back when, then later sim cities got so processor hungry.  I could barely run the last one on my p4.  I don't get why.


I played sim city 3000 ultimate on my 300PL. I must have been crazy because on some of the big scenarios, it took a long time to load. Surprised the computer never crashed or anything. I guess if I had more RAM than what was installed (64 MB?), like 384, it would have ran faster.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:36:42
I remember Sim City 2000 on the old Hewlett Packard (90 Mhz, 64MB of RAM, Windows 95). Ran fine for hours.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:44:44
Quote from: microsoft windows;219944
I remember Sim City 2000 on the old Hewlett Packard (90 Mhz, 64MB of RAM, Windows 95). Ran fine for hours.


Yeah my cousin would leave it run all night to get extra money. I did that once with roller coaster tycoon... inadvertently due to falling asleep.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:49:33
Quote from: EverythingIBM;219942
Actually, emulating windows 95 (in virtual PC) is so bloody slow, and there's no drivers for it. It's actually easier and faster just to run it natively. Games that change music (CD audio or MIDI tracks) will also have issues of hanging or long pauses when it changes due to not being a pentium 1 processor.


Virtualization != Emulation. As for drivers - depends on what VM software you are using. VMware is pretty good for supporting old OSes. Most of them make the guest OS think that they are running on a system with old hardware, even Windows 3.11 recognizes VMware's LAN drive out of the box.

As for CPU speed - if you were running 300 virtual machines on the one quad core CPU, you'd never have any issues with the CPU being too fast.

For old games, DOSbox is excellent. That is a proper emulator in that it will emulate either a 286, 386 or 486, depending on your preference.

Quote
Wouldn't it just be easier to get something to make the game run ultra fast?


When the baseline is "leave a computer on in a dusty corner in a place where you don't have to pay for electricity", it's hard to make it any easier. Not that leaving it in a corner for 2 years was hard to begin with.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 16:57:11
Quote from: ch_123;219950
Virtualization != Emulation. As for drivers - depends on what VM software you are using. VMware is pretty good for supporting old OSes. Most of them make the guest OS think that they are running on a system with old hardware, even Windows 3.11 recognizes VMware's LAN drive out of the box.

As for CPU speed - if you were running 300 virtual machines on the one quad core CPU, you'd never have any issues with the CPU being too fast.

For old games, DOSbox is excellent. That is a proper emulator in that it will emulate either a 286, 386 or 486, depending on your preference.


No, this also applies to windows 9x games. You can emulate them as much as you want, but there will always be issues and pauses with music.
DOSBox sometimes does a good job -- but whole games themselves tend to be slow throughout (I mean resource hungry ones).

So the best solution is running it all native.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sat, 04 September 2010, 17:15:50
I was never happy with DOSBox, but then that was years ago and I see now that the version number has leaped.  My main issue was that it wouldn't properly slowdown games without also slowing down Windows-global behaviour.  Nice to simulate a 16MHz performance level when you're gunning at mechs, not nice at all when you're trying to navigate a mouse cursor through menus.  Has it been fixed?
 
I find many music problems are resolved with a few choice files inserted into Windows from my trusty old Creative SB16 Setup CD.  A couple lines in the Registry, the usual SET BLASTER= and one restart later all is well ... at least in the DOS-era games I play.
... Armada 2525, MoO/MoO2, Ascendency, MW series, Privateer series, SC/SC2K, Empires (I think that's what it's called), some D&D-like questy/heros things, wizardry, ultima 1-4 ... all abandonware these days, I know there's others I can't recall atm.
 
Incidentally my bold claim about SC2000 might really be about the Vesa Doctor add-on thingy that's necessary to get the game running on modern machines, I think it might interact with video BIOS memory in mysterious and sinister ways.  Maybe SC2000 isn't that buggy at all ... though maybe it is.  Can't really test one without the other.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sat, 04 September 2010, 18:52:30
I don't like DosBos. I like true MS-DOS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sat, 04 September 2010, 19:20:41
Quote from: microsoft windows
I don't like DosBos. I like true MS-DOS.
You mean DOSBox?
 
I ask because DOS Boss (http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_software/vintage_beagle_bros_softwar/dos_boss.html) was a truly inspired and infinitely useful piece of software. Written by the Beagle Bros for Apple DOS 3.3 (or ProntoDOS (http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_software/vintage_beagle_bros_softwar/prontodos.html), another Beagle Bros masterpiece) - later ported to Apple ProDOS, I hear.
 
I love DOS Boss.
 
I don't like DOSBox either. Bloody thing takes more hard drive space than the MS-DOS 6.22 (3 x 1.44MB floppy disk) images. And more runtime memory to operate. And it's not 100% compatible? What's the point.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sat, 04 September 2010, 19:23:47
I mean a true MS-DOS system, old computer and all. Running DOS in an emulator just isn't as fun for some reason. And besides, when you've got some old computers, what else would you do?

But I'm interested in taking a look at that DOS Boss thing though.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 19:24:12
Quote from: Konrad;219963
I was never happy with DOSBox, but then that was years ago and I see now that the version number has leaped.  My main issue was that it wouldn't properly slowdown games without also slowing down Windows-global behaviour.  Nice to simulate a 16MHz performance level when you're gunning at mechs, not nice at all when you're trying to navigate a mouse cursor through menus.  Has it been fixed?
 
I find many music problems are resolved with a few choice files inserted into Windows from my trusty old Creative SB16 Setup CD.  A couple lines in the Registry, the usual SET BLASTER= and one restart later all is well ... at least in the DOS-era games I play.
... Armada 2525, MoO/MoO2, Ascendency, MW series, Privateer series, SC/SC2K, Empires (I think that's what it's called), some D&D-like questy/heros things, wizardry, ultima 1-4 ... all abandonware these days, I know there's others I can't recall atm.
 
Incidentally my bold claim about SC2000 might really be about the Vesa Doctor add-on thingy that's necessary to get the game running on modern machines, I think it might interact with video BIOS memory in mysterious and sinister ways.  Maybe SC2000 isn't that buggy at all ... though maybe it is.  Can't really test one without the other.

DOSBox is good for a temporary "quick fix". But there are issues, and always will be issues. It's too slow for my taste, even when ramming CPU cycles high. Certain DOS games just go too slow, while others run at magnificent speeds.
If you want to run hardware properly, and any software, you'll do it natively.

As for Sim City 2000...

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e5/Sc2kscr.png)
Darwin city?

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Hexley.png)
Apple's Darwin OS?

Darwin Darwin?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Charles_Darwin.jpg)

That picture... is interesting. I think I found the missing link.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Sat, 04 September 2010, 21:11:11
Quote from: microsoft windows;220000
when you've got some old computers, what else would you do?


Put a real OS on them?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 21:23:43
Quote from: instantkamera;220020
Put a real OS on them?


Actually, there's a lot of people who install windows 9x on their old computers (or even windows 3.1). I'd suggest you take a look at the vintage-computer.com forums.

But obviously you're not a vintage or old computer enthusiast; so you have no idea what runs best on older computers (nor do you even have a library of old software which is very picky and specific, especially about hardware). I sincerely doubt you even own a computer with a 8088 or pentium 1 processor.

I'd suggest you try something else besides a quanta-computer built macbook and explore different hardware and software.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Sat, 04 September 2010, 21:35:48
Quote from: EverythingIBM;220024
Actually, there's a lot of people who install windows 9x on their old computers (or even windows 3.1). I'd suggest you take a look at the vintage-computer.com forums.

But obviously you're not a vintage or old computer enthusiast; so you have no idea what runs best on older computers (nor do you even have a library of old software which is very picky and specific, especially about hardware). I sincerely doubt you even own a computer with a 8088 or pentium 1 processor.

I'd suggest you try something else besides a quanta-computer built macbook and explore different hardware and software.



Who was talking about Windows 9x (or even windows 3.1)?

Reread what I wrote, I never said anything about a Microsoft product (didn't even mention the word "Microsoft" or "Windows"). Read the thread title.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sat, 04 September 2010, 22:40:22
Quote from: instantkamera;220026
Who was talking about Windows 9x (or even windows 3.1)?

Reread what I wrote, I never said anything about a Microsoft product (didn't even mention the word "Microsoft" or "Windows"). Read the thread title.


MS-DOS is a mircosoft product. If you studied computer history, you'd know that IBM got Bill Gates to create DOS for the IBM PC. And it is a real operating system (which is the foundation for all windows versions).
Windows 9x supports restart in MS-DOS mode too. It practically is a GUI version of DOS in all reality.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 01:05:46
Quote from: ripster;220048
Bill Gates stole DOS from Seattle Computer Products. (http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson04_10_98.htm)

If you studied computer history you'd know that....

Gates didn't steal it, he just brokered it, and took 99.999999999% of the billions of dollars that it made.  It's really Peterson's fault for selling it to him so cheap, and not having a mind for business.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sun, 05 September 2010, 02:20:37
Quote from: ripster;220048
Bill Gates stole DOS from Seattle Computer Products. (http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson04_10_98.htm)

If you studied computer history you'd know that....


No Billy G bought it, it wasn't stolen. Although it may as well be considered as stolen considering how much Bill milked off of it. But it was Paterson's fault for not foreseeing this.
http://www.patersontech.com/dos/ (http://www.patersontech.com/dos/)

And Paterson only worked on it up until version 1.25. The rest microsoft handled.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 04:45:20
QDOS was a reverse engineered version of CP/M. It wasn't Patterson's to sell in the first place.

Quote
MS-DOS is a mircosoft product.


What is a 'mircosoft'?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Sun, 05 September 2010, 05:43:43
Unless you consider reverse engineering legal. If you don't, then just about every IBM-compatible computer from the mid-2000s on is illegal - EVEN IF IT WAS MADE BY IBM. (Yes, even IBM eventually started using PhoenixBIOS - a reverse engineered clone of the original IBM PC BIOS, that Compaq commissioned for the Compaq Portable.)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 07:26:24
There are mechanisms to legally reverse engineer code.
 
Most nerds are familiar with the famous "clean room" technique developed (circa 1981-82) by then young startup company Phoenix Technologies to reverse-engineer IBM's BIOS ROM (firmware) code, briefly described here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies) or here (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/65532/Reverse_Engineering). IBM lost it's little legal tizzy against Phoenix and Compaq (makers of the first IBM clone). Thus the birth of countless IBM clones and even competing BIOS makers (Award and AMI both used the same method to reverse-engineer the Phoenix BIOS; MR and Quadtel used it to duplicate AMI BIOS; Phoenix absorbed all of them except AMI over the years). It's since become a standardized engineering methodology in computing and other industries; it allows companies to migrate or recover data from (legally protected) computing platforms without - technically - violating the letter or intent of the law. The clean room approach (now often called Chinese Wall, lol) caused a lot of complicated huffy exception clauses in the DMCA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act) (which clearly attempts to circumlocutively denounce the approach without explicitly naming it or declaring it illegal, worth reading).
 
Many people claim that AMD and Cyrix used clean room approaches to reverse engineer Intel x86 chips.  The argument has merit, especially when applied to silicon hardware; basic compatibility specifications could be obtained from any public user manual.  The historical evidence for this is controversial, partly because Intel often sold AMD licenses (along with full specifications) to manufacture the chips they'd designed (it was the only way Intel could sell them in quantity, since US government and military policies required "2nd sourcing" availability). It bit Intel in the ass when they realized AMD was actually making more 386 and 486 parts than they were, then again when AMD absorbed Cyrix and began to play leapfrog with Intel in the endless race for newer and better chip generations. It seems highly unlikely that AMD would be able to access microprocessor-logic engineering experts who were somehow absolutely "uncontaminated" by any detailed technical knowledge of Intel chips whatsoever, a prerequisite for clean room reverse engineering ... especially since back then there were probably less than a hundred such experts available in the world, and almost all had worked for Intel (or closely with Intel) at some point in their schooling and careers.
 
An example of clean room gone bad is Apple suing the **** out of PsyStar for cloning Macs. Many people agree that PsyStar's reverse-engineering was not illegal, but Apple simply ground them into dust with hostile publicity (including mafia-style ostracism with suppliers and distributors within the industry) and merciless pressure and expense (not just the fees and fines but also numerous forced recalls and production halts) from the mighty legal machine. Incidentally, Apple's "utility patent" on their Mac ROMs expired years ago and cannot be renewed, although the piracy/cloning was blatantly obvious to everyone and Apple was right, they still didn't actually have a legal leg to stand on and should've lost. But they're very affluent and savvy, and they're legally very belligerent about protecting "their" technology and brand, having learned many hard lessons back in the days of Apple IIx clones. Beware ye who attempt to iClone. I believe that if IBM had maintained a chokehold on PC platforms by winning their challenge against Phoenix we'd all be running IIx-inspired clones instead of PC clones today.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 08:44:12
QDOS wasn't clean room, code was lifted verbatim from CP/M. Very vague laws on software copyright at the time allowed Patterson to get away with it.

It took the FreeDOS project something like a decade to come up with a proper clone of MS-DOS using legal means. QDOS was bashed together in a few months, and yet was pretty much identical to CP/M except that it ran on 8086s instead of 8088s. Granted, CP/M would have been much simpler to copy than the later versions of MS-DOS that FreeDOS was derived from, but you get the point I'm making.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 09:09:09
Quote from: bhtooefr;220066
Unless you consider reverse engineering legal. If you don't, then just about every IBM-compatible computer from the mid-2000s on is illegal - EVEN IF IT WAS MADE BY IBM. (Yes, even IBM eventually started using PhoenixBIOS - a reverse engineered clone of the original IBM PC BIOS, that Compaq commissioned for the Compaq Portable.)

Pretty much this is true.  Every pc is pretty much a result of IBM not being able to control it's patents because its not really theirs to control in the first place.  The same reason why Apple lost against Microsoft when they sued them for Windows.  Thankfully it all goes back to the early days when the companies and people that created the stuff basically just gave it away.  

The foundation of personal computers is a communist ideal. lol  Or really Utopian.  Those that are making money from them are pretty much perverting that as capitalists.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 09:18:09
Vague is an understatement.
There were simply no laws to protect software, authors certainly claimed copyrights on their code and software assumed the strange role of being a commercial commodity without being accepted as an intellectual property.  Some people attempted to legally equate authorship of code with authorship of books, they had mixed success.  The main deterrent against piracy back then was more a sense of public moral decency than fear of legal stopping power.
 
I remember laughing some years back when migrating the very last echo of my ancient 5.25" floppies onto HDD and seeing a message something like "This copy of CP/M has been unregistered for 23,837 days".
 
I never actually used QDOS, neither the 86-DOS nor Sinclair QDOS versions I've just discovered on Wikipedia.
 
Besides, my pre-Win95 days were all DOS4GW and slackware anyhow.  MSDOS622 was not as good.  OS/2 and Win3.x (and Macs) were such utter pieces of **** that I avoided GUIs entirely until about mid-1996.
 
What about PCDOS, DRDOS, and NDOS?  Are they "clean roomed" off MSDOS?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sun, 05 September 2010, 09:33:12
Quote from: EverythingIBM;220024



Actually, there's a lot of people who install windows 9x on their old computers (or even windows 3.1). I'd suggest you take a look at the vintage-computer.com forums.

But obviously you're not a vintage or old computer enthusiast; so you have no idea what runs best on older computers (nor do you even have a library of old software which is very picky and specific, especially about hardware). I sincerely doubt you even own a computer with a 8088 or pentium 1 processor.

I'd suggest you try something else besides a quanta-computer built macbook and explore different hardware and software.


Don't bother with isntantkamera. He's just a dumbass. I put him in the spam filter for a reason.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 09:34:38
Quote from: chimera15
... Apple lost against Microsoft when they sued them for Windows. Thankfully it all goes back to the early days when the companies and people that created the stuff basically just gave it away ... Those that are making money from them are pretty much perverting that as capitalists.
Apple sued Microsoft long before that; they'd hired MS to make an FP BASIC for the AppleII ... all went well until they saw that MS was free to license AppleSoft BASIC (their code) to anyone who wanted it, ie: anyone who wanted to make an AppleII clone. Worse, Microsoft later sold ever-improving versions of their BASIC to Apple's competitors (Commodore, etc). And pulled the same stunt yet again on IBM, offering to sell MSDOS to the public (so IBM couldn't control distro and so MSDOS could run on any compatible machine, whether made by IBM or not).  Microsoft never gave a **** who made the machines, just as long as there were always more machines to run Micro-Software on.  In that regard they've actually done computing society a great favour.
 
Bill Gates was an ******* about his profits right back to the very beginning, he wrote famous letters which condemned even his nerd buddies from freely distributing copies of "his" Altair BASIC. An odd expectation; collaborating on software then trying to sell it to your collaborators (and everyone else) and getting pissed that they won't pay, worse yet, they have their own ideas about distributing it - for free! - which don't agree with yours.
 
Capitalists flocked to software once people saw how profitable the first killer app (VisiCalc) was. Ergo the false assumption of most consumers that buying apps (and the OS to run them on) is the only option. linux is maligned as "only for nerds" or is seen as some amateur bumbling kludge that can't reliably do anything worthwhile. Sucks to be a sheep. Then again, it apparently pays to be an *******, sadly.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 11:09:49
Quote from: microsoft windows;220094
Don't bother with isntantkamera. He's just a dumbass. I put him in the spam filter for a reason.


Is it the same reason everyone else has you in their spam filter?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 12:17:12
If I used my spam filter there'd be nobody left to talk to. ;)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 13:22:02
Quote from: Julle
You should see his Unix pubic hair.
Ugh. I think I'd rather run Windows or gargle razor blades.  Thanks for offering to share though, lol.
 
Random:
I wonder if subscribed threads get bumped when somebody you've filtered posts something.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 16:57:48
I often wonder what happens if you get a PM from someone you've blocked...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 17:10:58
Quote from: Konrad;220093
I never actually used QDOS, neither the 86-DOS nor Sinclair QDOS versions I've just discovered on Wikipedia.


Microsoft ended up completely buying all the rights to those things, Patterson and SCP ended up with a lot more than $50,000 in the end, between buyouts and lawsuits. They sure as hell didn't see the half of what MS made off them though.
 
Quote
What about PCDOS, DRDOS, and NDOS?  Are they "clean roomed" off MSDOS?


PC-DOS was IBM's branding of MS-DOS. IBM licensed MS-DOS and branded it as their own product. IIRC, initial versions were the same as the MS-DOS of the equivalent version number, but later on after they split with MS, they made their own modifications and used it for POS applications and the like.

It was originally MS' intention to license the source code of MS-DOS to various vendors who would port it to their specific machine. In reality, the clone market meant that the market for DOS was limited to x86 machines based on the IBM PC architecture, and thus MS sold MS-DOS for the IBM PC exclusively. The "Don't sell it but license it to system vendors" thing was used by MS for Xenix, their implementation of BSD Unix.

Microsoft Unix, that one never ceases to amuse...

DR-DOS, which was Digital Research DOS, was made by Gary Killdall and the CP/M crew as a compatible alternative to MS-DOS. MS used all sorts of insidious bullying to keep demand low. It did achieve popularity in some sectors, and it was licensed by various parties who branded it as their own version of DOS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Sun, 05 September 2010, 17:18:31
Quote from: Julle;220146
I hope MW has extra storage in his PM inbox.


I got all my old hard disks chugging away!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Sun, 05 September 2010, 17:29:35
Not Sinclair QDOS, though - that was a completely different OS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 17:57:35
Such is the problem with the term "Disk Operating System" - it was such a generic term that every major vendor had a "DOS", some like IBM had a few that had nothing to do with eachother. Even Apple had one...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Sun, 05 September 2010, 18:42:59
The solution is to use the developer's name, too.

IBM DOS/360 - or just use the modern name, z/VSE. ;)
Sinclair QDOS
SCP QDOS
MS-DOS
Apple DOS

So on, so on.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Sun, 05 September 2010, 19:42:22
Quote from: kishy;219703
Yeah, it's one of these (submodel 045, not all original however) (http://www.ps2project.org/index.php?title=PS/2_Model_56_%288556%29).

Would be running OS/2 (y'know, something worth bothering with) except I can't find a TCP/IP stack for 2.x.


I've got 2.1 on my one of those...loading it took FOREVER ugh...19 floppies go to hell lol
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 21:10:41
Quote from: bhtooefr
IBM DOS/360 - or just use the modern name, z/VSE. ;)
Sinclair QDOS
SCP QDOS
MS-DOS
Apple DOS
 
So on, so on.
I think I disagree with Apple DOS.  Should DOS versions that don't run on x86's be included?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Sun, 05 September 2010, 22:15:20
Quote from: kishy;220225
Win95 is like, 24.

It had 95 when I got it, then I installed 2.1. Determined there was no easy-to-find TCP/IP stack so I went 95. Then went OS/2 again for testing some stuff, then back to 95.

I'm surprised the FDD isn't toast.


FDDs don't really fail: I opened a few up for cleaning, they're pretty simplistic, not much can break or go wrong. Some of the "rods" may need greasing now and then, but that's it.

In fact, I feel like opening another one up right now.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 05 September 2010, 22:52:28
I've seen 3½" and 5¼" FDDs still work perfectly after ~20 years. And some older units (pre-HD capacities, even pre-PC) still working after ~30 years. Even my 1978 Apple Disk II 140KB FDDs (and early-1980s "slim" TEAC clones) still work perfectly, although I do service and maintain them every few years.
 
It's true that the drives can fail, but it happens so rarely that FDDs seem to almost always outlast the PC chassis they're mounted in. My anecdotal observation is that FDDs typically outlive HDDs (yes, I know FDDs don't accumulate as many hours of active use as HDDs). I haven't had to buy a FDD for years, they just keep moving from chassis to chassis and slowly multiplying because I so rarely find units that fail. A shame really, since I really love those uber FDD platter magnets.
 
I haven't seen many ancient (say, pre-PATA3) HDDs that still work, and I think it's been decades since I've seen a working winchester.
 
Floppy disk media though is another matter. The stupid floppy disks themselves are just ****ing unreliable. Always buy quality media; always keep 'em in safe temp zones, in a dark, dry, cozy place far away from people or anything vaguely electromagnetic ... and one disk out of every ten will still simply fail at random every year or so, I expect at least half of them to be useless. Of course it's always the stupid **** like your proprietary circa-1985 GMOUSE.EXE serial mouse driver which survives while valuable - near impossible to find on internet - things like MSDOS5.0 install disks or Gravis Ultrasound drivers always get corrupted. I hate the harsh grinding TARDIS-like noises (and delays) on a FDD when it has difficulty reading bad media.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 00:24:04
Quote from: kishy
The media, if cared for, will last a long time...problem is finding media that has been cared for well since day 1
Does that include all the time in shipping and sitting under those glaring lights at Wal-Mart?
 
Maybe we'll disagree on this.  I know many instances where drives were well maintained (regularly cleaned and lubed and calibrated) and disks carefully stored in near-ideal conditions ... and still see high failure rates, say about 1-in-10 disks at least partly corrupted after 1 year, 4-in-10 after 2 years ... although I'll admit that any which survive intact after the first few years seem to last indefinitely.
 
Most HDDs (notorious IBM Deathstars notwithstanding) seem to last at least 2-3 years of heavy use or at least 5 years normal use ... very few survive much beyond that, although more modern (SMART) drives tend to fail in more of a gradual-erosion manner than a catastrophic one.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 00:46:39
Why else would you use disks if not for storage?
 
Every now and then I have to recover data from ancient disks, even that's not a real issue these days since internet (abandonware) archives are always growing.
 
About the only useful place floppies have left on modern computers is emergency boot sessions or mobo firmware recovery. Even those roles are being stolen by live CDs and USBs.  Even old computers can interface well with most modern technologies.  Only the most venerable machinery still requires floppy options.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 00:53:49
lol, because of their puny capacity I've never needed floppy images for anything other than DOS boot/install disks. Or the aforementioned emergency BIOS recovery (and that only when FDD-recovery is hardwired into a mobo and booting from PATA/SATA/ATAPI or USB or LAN or external drives isn't a working option and the mobo has dead firmware but otherwise works - a very rare situation).
 
Agreed, only a madman would ever use floppies for backups or long-term storage. With today's price-per-GByte HDDs, CD/DVD writables, SSDs, removable flash (USB, SD/SDHC, CF, etc), and even online storage it's no wonder that FDDs are going to the museum. In fact, I'm still half-assedly looking for a working 5¼" (1.2MB HD or better) FDD with nice black faceplate using the kind of release mechanism and LED I prefer. Can't buy 'em new, can't even really buy 'em used, can't justify more than $10.
 
Incidentally, I've recently discovered these (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hyperos-dram-hard-drive-block,1186.html) devices while researching high-performance alternatives to SSD. (Flash is much faster than mechanical, but RAM is much faster still and doesn't suffer from a low number of write cycles. Plus RAM, being volatile, is a near perfect way to secure swap/cache/temp data if you're paranoid.)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Mon, 06 September 2010, 05:45:14
Quote from: Konrad;220266
Why else would you use disks if not for storage?
 
Every now and then I have to recover data from ancient disks, even that's not a real issue these days since internet (abandonware) archives are always growing.
 
About the only useful place floppies have left on modern computers is emergency boot sessions or mobo firmware recovery. Even those roles are being stolen by live CDs and USBs.  Even old computers can interface well with most modern technologies.  Only the most venerable machinery still requires floppy options.


Flashing a BIOS you usually use a floppy disk. I never heard of using a CD/RW.

Quote from: Konrad;220262
Does that include all the time in shipping and sitting under those glaring lights at Wal-Mart?
 
Maybe we'll disagree on this.  I know many instances where drives were well maintained (regularly cleaned and lubed and calibrated) and disks carefully stored in near-ideal conditions ... and still see high failure rates, say about 1-in-10 disks at least partly corrupted after 1 year, 4-in-10 after 2 years ... although I'll admit that any which survive intact after the first few years seem to last indefinitely.
 
Most HDDs (notorious IBM Deathstars notwithstanding) seem to last at least 2-3 years of heavy use or at least 5 years normal use ... very few survive much beyond that, although more modern (SMART) drives tend to fail in more of a gradual-erosion manner than a catastrophic one.


I have two deskstars that are working perfectly fine. Nice little drives. Although they sound like SCSIs on bootup.
IBM created SMART.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 05:55:27
A lot of motherboards these days use USB drives for flashing.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 06:48:08
Better mobos have redundant BIOS chips.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Mon, 06 September 2010, 07:25:12
Quote from: EverythingIBM;220038
...[MS-DOS] is a real operating system


so ... a ROS? And here I thought it was a DISK operating system...

Quote from: EverythingIBM;220038

(which is the foundation for all windows versions).

no Microsoft guru here, but I'm pretty sure that is untrue. NT?

Quote from: microsoft windows;220094
Don't bother with isntantkamera. He's just a dumbass.


or

"I prefer to live in a world where Java and JavaScript are the same thing, and installing the same useless software on the same useless hardware is considered 'geeky'."

Quote from: microsoft windows;220094

I put him in the spam filter for a reason.


or

"I like to superficially "ignore" people so I can rock this flamboyant sig while still reading all their posts anyway because I can't help myself."


Quote from: ripster;220110
Hey InstantKamera - at least you are with good company!

Where did that Gr1m dude go?


Hey RIP, happy to join your ranks! Or, as they say in your land:

"Howdy! yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee- HAW!" **accompanied by several cavalier discharges of constitutionally protected firearm**

I think Gr1m used GH, got his (working) Steelseries, and then dumped us. I feel dirty.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 07:35:19
Quote from: Konrad;220308
Better mobos have redundant BIOS chips.


Better still mobos don't have a BIOS at all.

Quote
no Microsoft guru here, but I'm pretty sure that is untrue. NT?


Yeah, NT was based off DEC VMS and OS/2. ME was the last Windows based on MS-DOS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 07:52:44
Please don't ever mention WinME again.  Just call it Win9x, less offensive that way.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: didjamatic on Mon, 06 September 2010, 08:12:00
I agree it should not be mentioned, but ME is unworthy to be called 9x.  It was an abomination and the worst OS Microsoft has ever released.  And I'm a Microsoft fan who will argue with MS haters all day long about windows value as the best OS for an enterprise network.  Win ME didn't belong in the enterprise (The IP stack and other factors made it a piece of garbage) and it didn't belong at home (the rest of the OS was a piece of garbage)  Even MS said publicly that it should not be placed on a business network, that Win2000 was designed for that.  They pulled it from the shelves faster than any other OS, acknowledging the massive failure that it was.  It was 10x worse than Vista pre-SP1.

The best was users with ME trying to run Weatherbug.  It bluescreened faster than a plug and play parallel scanner demo.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 08:21:04
I ran it on my home PC when it came out until XP came out. It didn't strike me as too bad (then again, I was maybe 11 years old or something, so my standards weren't as high as they are today) but I do remember specifically the lack of MS-DOS mode, which was a problem when trying to run old games.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 09:30:46
Quote from: didjamatic
... [strike]ME[/strike] is unworthy to be called 9x. It was an abomination and the worst OS Microsoft has ever released ... It was 10x worse than Vista pre-SP1.
1) yes, worst OS Microsoft *or anyone else* ever released, no question, no doubt.
2) not so sure about the Vista comparison; Vista really sucks ass
3) and how exactly is post-SP1 Vista any good?
 
Quote from: ch_123;220329
I ran it on my home PC ...
Me too ... er I mean, I as well.
I remember staring at a lot of BSODs with their meaningless error codes (not even Microsoft knew what they meant or how to fix 'em), over and over again.
System Restore Points didn't actually save any important files, they just rollbacked on the Registry and ****ed **** up even worse.
Good luck finding any [strike]WinME[/strike] drivers; most developers stayed with Win98 (many were lazy and just renamed their 98 files; often didn't work) before happily embracing WinXP.
I used DOS to play DOS games, at least it didn't BSOD all the time. The godawful carnage that a genuinely buggy DOS game like XCOM would cause [strike]ME[/strike] was unbelievable and took several restarts to clear away.
 
This is the only OS in history which suffered from more compatibily, stability, and performance issues than both it's predecessor (WinNT4, Win98SE) and successor (WinXP) versions.
 
I'm not exaggerating when I say that (with hardly a second thought) I wiped every copy of this ****piece off my drives and with a smile frisbeed the disc out of my car, literally the same day I installed XP.
(Normally I'm cautious when adopting new OS builds, normally I feel bad about not packratting software I paid for no matter how useless it'll ever be again, normally I'd even feel a little guilty about wasting a CD or causing a traffic hazard or even just littering. **** that.)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Mon, 06 September 2010, 10:04:25
To be fair, Vista did have a lot of good things going for it. Microsoft's first attempt to globally use clean modular processing and protected I/O (something real OS platforms like linux have emphasized for many years). New and Improved Registry and driver models which were surprisingly actually both new and improved. I approve of the inclusion of new gimmicks like WEI which are intended to help idiot users use their computers properly.
 
I disapprove of Microsoft's sudden realization that they should act on 3D. Hey look, WinXP looks exactly the same as it did 5 years ago, that's not right because we made all those service packs, so let's make the new one look really fancy regardless of the performance hit. (Y'know, some of us feel that our hardware would be better dedicated to running our programs than more useless eye-candy in our OS.)
I disapprove of the 26,383,773,304 background running processes and all the other bloat. You can't open Notepad with less than 8GB RAM unless you enable swapfile?
I disapprove of the Microsoft=Adminstrator and User=Subadministrator hierarchy.
 
Win7 has sandboxed much more (though not all) of the system. It's more streamlined and lightweight but still unacceptable. At least Microsoft actually implemented the System Nag in a decent way that doesn't make you want to punch your computer. By the time they've pushed out Win8 it should be almost as good as linux was a few years ago. Well worth paying another $250-$500 for a Genuine copy.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 13:34:49
Quote from: Konrad;220370
To be fair, Vista did have a lot of good things going for it. Microsoft's first attempt to globally use clean modular processing and protected I/O (something real OS platforms like linux have emphasized for many years). New and Improved Registry and driver models which were surprisingly actually both new and improved. I approve of the inclusion of new gimmicks like WEI which are intended to help idiot users use their computers properly.
 
I disapprove of Microsoft's sudden realization that they should act on 3D. Hey look, WinXP looks exactly the same as it did 5 years ago, that's not right because we made all those service packs, so let's make the new one look really fancy regardless of the performance hit. (Y'know, some of us feel that our hardware would be better dedicated to running our programs than more useless eye-candy in our OS.)
I disapprove of the 26,383,773,304 background running processes and all the other bloat. You can't open Notepad with less than 8GB RAM unless you enable swapfile?
I disapprove of the Microsoft=Adminstrator and User=Subadministrator hierarchy.
 
Win7 has sandboxed much more (though not all) of the system. It's more streamlined and lightweight but still unacceptable. At least Microsoft actually implemented the System Nag in a decent way that doesn't make you want to punch your computer. By the time they've pushed out Win8 it should be almost as good as linux was a few years ago. Well worth paying another $250-$500 for a Genuine copy.

I actually like os eyecandy, but you can make xp look and work exactly like vista, and add things like the real vista sidebar/directx10 to it with things like alky for windows as well, and it's basically Vista, but much better and without all the early driver problems Vista had.

Windows 7 seems exactly like Vista to me, the only difference is that it has a much better driver/compatibility solved now.

If you had an nvidia chipset, your computer was basically impossible to upgrade to Vista early on, which is where much of the really bad rep came from I think.

It's not actually as resource hungry as people say it is.  I was running Vista on c2d's with 2 or 3gigs, once the drivers got sorted out, and playing fps's with little or no difference from my xp systems that had more power and more ram.

Windows was always disastrous when it first gets released, and requires tons of updates to make it work correctly.  It happened with 95, xp, me, and vista.  It always takes the second versions, 98 second edition, xp sp2 or sp3, and windows7  to make the system actually usuable.  Then no one remembers how horrible the system was to begin with, and everyone complains when the next one comes out like it's so bad.


And yeah I used ME too, and it wasn't horrible when it was initially installed.  It actually fixed a lot of driver problems that 98 had with several of my system, and in it's basic configuration worked pretty smoothly.  The problem I had with it was was when you started to actually work and add stuff to it that it would easily get, I don't know, corrupted or something, and stuff would start going wrong with it.  The reason why ME is always remembered as such a disaster is that it never really got a service pack, and xp superseded it shortly after its release.

The thing that made everyone really pissed off with Vista I think was that Microsoft had this huge campaign of having a giant beta where everyone was supposed to give their suggestions and help improve the system and make it bulletproof.  But Microsoft never seemed to actually listen to any of the suggestions, or complaints,  especially from some very famous testers like Chris Pirillo, who made a huge stink.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 16:02:47
Quote
It's not actually as resource hungry as people say it is. I was running Vista on c2d's with 2 or 3gigs, once the drivers got sorted out, and playing fps's with little or no difference from my xp systems that had more power and more ram.


Problem is that very few people had 2-3GB of RAM or Core 2 Duos at the time. Single core Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s with 0.5-1GB of RAM was the standard. Vista did not run well on these systems. It was unreliable when launched, and had all sorts of compatibility issues. XP worked, people stuck with it.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Mon, 06 September 2010, 17:02:20
ME wasn't that good, but it'd definitely not as bad as Windows 98.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Mon, 06 September 2010, 17:05:21
Quote from: ch_123;220499
Problem is that very few people had 2-3GB of RAM or Core 2 Duos at the time. Single core Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s with 0.5-1GB of RAM was the standard. Vista did not run well on these systems. It was unreliable when launched, and had all sorts of compatibility issues. XP worked, people stuck with it.


Windows 7 isn't really all that bad. It runs great on P4 systems.

I'd definitely take XP over Vista any day. XP still does just about everything you need to operate a computer, and it's not nearly as slow as Windows Vista. And Windows 3.1's a million times as fast as Vista, but there's not too much software made for it anymore.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 17:10:57
Quote from: microsoft windows;220513
ME wasn't that good, but it'd definitely not as bad as Windows 98.


(http://holycrapthatsfunny.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/gtfo.jpg)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Mon, 06 September 2010, 18:31:23
Quote from: Konrad;220237
I think I disagree with Apple DOS.  Should DOS versions that don't run on x86's be included?


I was referring to various OSes that were called DOS in general, not just IBM 5150-compatible x86 OSes.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Mon, 06 September 2010, 19:02:26
There were a lot of DOS's. MS-DOS was Microsoft's DOS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Mon, 06 September 2010, 19:04:15
Really? Tell us more.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Mon, 06 September 2010, 19:06:32
I've got a feeling you've got the mental capacity to see that MS-DOS is Microsoft's DOS.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 08 September 2010, 10:55:01
OMG YOU SHOULD USE A CRT WITH THAT IT WOULD BE SO MUCH BETTER

/caps
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Wed, 08 September 2010, 11:51:45
which browser (and more importantly, which version)?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: mr_a500 on Wed, 08 September 2010, 11:55:58
Quote from: kishy;220898
Well, I think I found the new minimum hardware config. Problem is the browser isn't liking vBulletin's URL scheme, so I'm on the hunt for another (it can read the main forum index but not get into subforums or threads. Interestingly, it does work with the newer version of vBulletin).
80286-10, 2.6MB of RAM.


Impressive... but with only 6Mhz and 2Mb more, I'd rather have full graphical browser that can view threads and post. (Amiga 3000/16 - same year as your PS/2)

(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12412&stc=1&d=1283964642)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Wed, 08 September 2010, 13:25:13
Lynx is not a DOS port of links or elinks. they are separate, portable (cross-platform), and open source C applications, all of them (in other words, lynx exists on *nix as well, I know cause it's still developed and I use it fairly often). Anyway, my point was that you can probably build a later version easily enough.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: instantkamera on Wed, 08 September 2010, 13:51:17
do you (or does DOS) come with a free C compiler. is there a GCC built for DOS? how does the MS world deal with these things. get the source for lynx and build that sucka!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 08 September 2010, 14:32:52
Quote from: ch_123;220329
I ran it on my home PC when it came out until XP came out. It didn't strike me as too bad (then again, I was maybe 11 years old or something, so my standards weren't as high as they are today) but I do remember specifically the lack of MS-DOS mode, which was a problem when trying to run old games.

I was SO MAD and absolutely shocked when my DOS games didn't work on XP. Bill ruined windows by disabling MS-DOS to the user! It's actually more like degrading than upgrading.
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_18XkaPdQZu4/Rq6tm60FnGI/AAAAAAAAEcQ/Q1_4qK5rZ94/s400/000000000aaaBGatesKIng.0)

Mind you SOME DOS games work, and those that do have trouble running or quit suddenly. Thanks a lot Bill... I hope that baby made your shirt stink:
(http://www.thirdwayblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/bill-melissa-gates-foundation-785125.jpeg)

Quote from: ch_123;220319
Better still mobos don't have a BIOS at all.

Yeah, NT was based off DEC VMS and OS/2. ME was the last Windows based on MS-DOS.

ALL versions of windows have MS-DOS lurking in the back somewhere (oh believe me, there's a lot of legacy things lurking... silent... in waiting). Doesn't the XBOX even have some legacy MS-DOS stuff caked in it too? It wouldn't surprise me... I guess you could truly call it a "DOSBOX" then.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 08 September 2010, 14:49:55
Quote from: EverythingIBM;221002
Bill ruined windows by disabling MS-DOS to the user!


Well, there was no MS-DOS in the NT systems to disable, so yeah, whatever.

Quote
ALL versions of windows have MS-DOS lurking in the back somewhere


Not the NT ones. They have MS-DOS emulation, but no actual DOS itself. The 64-bit versions of XP/Vista/7 removed this.

Bare in mind that the whole point of NT was to completely remove all 16-bit DOS from Windows. The codebase was rewritten from scratch by DEC engineers that MS brought in.

Quote
Doesn't the XBOX even have some legacy MS-DOS stuff caked in it too?


Now you're just taking the piss.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 08 September 2010, 15:33:12
Quote from: ch_123;221009
Well, there was no MS-DOS in the NT systems to disable, so yeah, whatever.

Not the NT ones. They have MS-DOS emulation, but no actual DOS itself. The 64-bit versions of XP/Vista/7 removed this.

Bare in mind that the whole point of NT was to completely remove all 16-bit DOS from Windows. The codebase was rewritten from scratch by DEC engineers that MS brought in.

Now you're just taking the piss.


I thought Mark Lucovsky did most of the programming for NT?

No, just becaue windows uses the NT kernel doesn't mean there's some MS-DOS legacy stuff in the background. It's impossible to remove MS-DOS unless Microsoft completely rewrites windows eliminating all previous comaptibility. Of course they won't do that.
Go Tim Paterson!
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 08 September 2010, 15:50:21
Quote from: EverythingIBM;221029
I thought Mark Lucovsky did most of the programming for NT?


Dave Cutler was the guy who did most of the design. The OS was based off DEC VMS, RT-11, and some experimental one that never made it to production, all of which he designed.

Quote
No, just becaue windows uses the NT kernel doesn't mean there's some MS-DOS legacy stuff in the background. It's impossible to remove MS-DOS unless Microsoft completely rewrites windows eliminating all previous comaptibility.


Go Go Reading Comprehension Skills!

Quote
The codebase was rewritten from scratch by DEC engineers that MS brought in.


You don't need code of an operating system to achieve compatibility with it in another. Even Unix systems like Linux or OS X can support a load of Windows apps using Wine.

But as you so correctly pointed out, NT, 2000 and XP did not support a load of all games, this was because they were designed to use the underlying DOS environment which was not present in the newer Windows. A lot of 90s games will have "Not compatible with NT" written on the back.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: EverythingIBM on Wed, 08 September 2010, 16:16:36
Quote from: ch_123;221031

Go Go Reading Comprehension Skills!


I don't think a typo constitutes towards reading comprehension. Now using "it's" consecutively for "its" is.

Quote from: ch_123;221031

You don't need code of an operating system to achieve compatibility with it in another. Even Unix systems like Linux or OS X can support a load of Windows apps using Wine.

But as you so correctly pointed out, NT, 2000 and XP did not support a load of all games, this was because they were designed to use the underlying DOS environment which was not present in the newer Windows. A lot of 90s games will have "Not compatible with NT" written on the back.


Well Games like "Siege of Avalon," though not supported on NT, do run with XP. I've had no issues with it... yet.

And it's not always about compatibility, M$ disabled many DOS functions (many of which I believe are still there -- come on, MS-DOS is a tiny dinky thing), even though windows (in itself regardless of the NT kernel), still has many legacy stuff all deep in there.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Wed, 08 September 2010, 16:24:10
Typos are unimportant. Replying against a post in a way that demonstrates that you didn't read it...

Quote
Well Games like "Siege of Avalon,"


Was this a DirectX game? NT4 didn't support beyond DX3 (IIRC) because of the way it locked down access to video drivers. MS changed this in 2k so that DirectX could interface with the drivers properly.

Quote
M$ disabled many DOS functions


Such as?

Quote
even though windows (in itself regardless of the NT kernel), still has many legacy stuff all deep in there.


Such as?

And it wasn't the kernel. The whole underlying OS is different to DOS and the DOS-based Windows versions.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: bhtooefr on Thu, 09 September 2010, 06:59:21
IIRC, there is a small amount of DOS code in 32-bit versions of Windows NT (including 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and 7.)

However, it's in the NTVDM, which is a subsystem that runs on top of Windows NT, and is only used by DOS and Windows 3.1 applications.

Relative to older versions of NT, 2000 and XP significantly ADDED functions to the NTVDM to support the... shortcuts... that DOS and Windows 3.1 developers made when developing their applications. It's not that MS "removed DOS functionality" from XP, it's that MS had trouble supporting the software of third-party DOS developers that were used to touching hardware directly, and keeping them from touching the hardware while making things still work. Oh, and they can't have much overhead - NTVDM was designed to run well on a 386.

NTVDM, in concept, is quite similar to running DOS in a virtual machine, although with a lot less overhead. (Also, early versions actually were EMULATORS, because they needed to run on platforms other than x86.)
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 07:06:14
This was what I was referring to when I said that DOS was emulated/virtualized in NT. But the underlying OS is not in any way DOS based.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Thu, 09 September 2010, 07:18:47
Regardless of how much MSDOS might or might not be coded into XP, that fact is that if no amount of tinkering in XP (even with virtual machines or DOSBox) can run the game/app it will still run with an MSDOS boot session.
 
You can download images for MSDOS622 boot (or even the Install Disks) all over the place. If you need MSDOS a lot then it's worth putting onto a bootable (2GB) partition.
 
If you still can't achieve compatibility (because of insurmountable hardware conflicts) they you just gotta use an older machine.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 07:53:17
I wonder why MS didn't include some full DOS virtualization mode with XP. Granted machines of the day didn't have the virtualization tech we have today, but on the other hand - it's MS-DOS. It's little more than a glorified machine console monitor...

Quote
NTVDM, in concept, is quite similar to running DOS in a virtual machine, although with a lot less overhead. (Also, early versions actually were EMULATORS, because they needed to run on platforms other than x86.)


AFAIK, chunks of the NT system itself had to be emulated on certain other architectures, which lead to it running much faster on x86 machines, even thought other architectures such as Alpha were much faster than the contemporary x86 chips of the day.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Thu, 09 September 2010, 09:44:55
Quote from: ch_123;221196
I wonder why MS didn't include some full DOS virtualization mode with XP. Granted machines of the day didn't have the virtualization tech we have today, but on the other hand - it's MS-DOS. It's little more than a glorified machine console monitor...
Yeah, it's not much more than just a file execution prompt with some integrated commands. I suppose the full MSDOS "package" with protected mode EMM386, SCANDISK, DEFRAG, DRVSPACE, EDIT, DEBUG, etc might begin to qualify as something approaching a "real" OS. You might even claim that TSRs could allow some sort of multitasking.
 
I suppose that MS didn't include it because they no longer wanted any obligation to constantly support DOS itself and DOS apps. Ever. It's also harder to convince people to pay for new OS versions when they can buy apps that run on old ones. And there were too many non-MS DOS alternatives available. And too many pirated copies of MSDOS. More profit in Windows. It could even be argued that Win95 was a real upgrade, kinda. Win98 certainly was.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 09:58:00
Well, given that the Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate editions of Windows 7 come bundle with an integrated Windows XP license and VM...
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Thu, 09 September 2010, 10:04:31
You have to download the XP VM component, not really what I'd call integrated.
 
I haven't had any luck using it (on my Win7 Ult 32) to install XPDM drivers (when W7 system HDD is moved into my old i865G P4 mobo). Other than that I haven't personally found any XP-native apps which won't run on W7 (some require a little initial tweaking, but still work perfectly, discounting things like TweakXP of course).
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 10:51:22
It's integrated in the sense of how it interacts with the OS when it is installed. I assume they don't bundle with all installations because A) It takes up a lot of space for something that not everyone is going to use and B) not all systems that meet the recommend spec for Windows 7 necessarily support virtualization at usable speeds.

MS' virtual machine software is absolute bollocks, but it's the thought that counts I guess.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Thu, 09 September 2010, 11:01:54
You forgot reason #3 ... Microsoft wants to track every copy of major components like XPVM with a logged Genuine Windows and GUID (and user info like registered user name/etc entered after Windows installation is complete). When too many pirated copies are confirmed to be floating around they can be deactivated/blacklisted en masse as necessary.
 
They do the same thing with DX, WMP, IE, SDKs, and of course the WinOS itself lol.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 11:06:17
MS isn't the only company that does that... they weren't the first, and they weren't the last.

One of the more interesting examples I have seen is DEC's VMS, which has a unified licensing system integrated into the OS. All software, both from the OS vendor and from third parties, are licensed through this. I think DEC's Unix implementations did this too.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Thu, 09 September 2010, 11:30:31
Ah, I've seen controversy about this before on consumer PC software. MS has been maligned forever of course. Blizzard was sued for (and rapidly disabled) the "contaminant" software they included in a SC patch (it would detect, report, and allow deactivation of any Blizzard software found on the PC).
 
I don't even wanna think about all the countless software I've seen which shoves hidden malware in place to extort money or otherwise make a buck from the user.
 
The VMS licensing repository you mention actually seems intelligent. Another good way to secure against crapware and tampering. Too bad I don't have any Alpha or Itanium machines to run it on, lol.
 
I wish MS had done a better job implementing that idea with their **** Windows (Un)Installer.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 11:34:26
Well, when I say "all software", I mean all software that needs to be licensed. Open source utils work without needing any additional poking.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Thu, 09 September 2010, 17:23:16
I don't think Microsoft will ever blacklist or de-activate my pirated copy of Windows 3.1.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: keyboardlover on Thu, 09 September 2010, 19:19:08
Quote from: microsoft windows;221372
I don't think Microsoft will ever blacklist or de-activate my pirated copy of Windows 3.1.


Is that why you think it's better to use an antiquated OS?
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Thu, 09 September 2010, 19:51:51
One of the reasons. But the main reason why I use Windows 3.1 is because I like it. It's not as boring as Windows XP and 7.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: chimera15 on Thu, 09 September 2010, 19:56:20
That only happens if you install their updates, and never happens with xp.  Once xp is activated it's good to go, even if it's pirated.  The only reason it might get deactivated is if you reinstall it in another system or something.  Then that messes it up.  If you have a vlc copy though, which most good pirated copies are that doesn't really even bother it much.  You can also get xp systems like "black xp" which are almost completely rewritten versions of windows xp, with nothing to worry about activation either, that are as good or better than Vista/7.  Windows 7 is the first one to actually deactivate you if you have a pirated boot loader, it'll mess your system up.  But you can choose not to install that update, and there are also bootloaders that don't care about that update as well.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: microsoft windows on Thu, 09 September 2010, 20:18:30
I also got a handy Dell disk that gives me unlimited legal installs of Windows XP without prompting me for a product key. I got 7 installations off of that disk running on assorted computers as of now and everything works great.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 10 September 2010, 00:43:07
You shoulda saved time by agreeing on a phonetic alphabet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICAO_spelling_alphabet), rip.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Fri, 10 September 2010, 05:36:41
"Not boring" is a quality I like in women and books. For operating systems, I like things that work.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Fri, 10 September 2010, 05:58:38
Quote from: ripster;221527
I grew up Military. Switched to modern talk.
I can imagine it now ...
Quote from: Ranjeet, Microsoft Tech Support (India)
Sir, now please tell me the next 5 characters from your Activation Code.
Quote from: Ripster
7NX1P, as in "l77t, Noob, haXors, fsck111, Pwnage"
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Brodie337 on Sat, 11 September 2010, 18:14:23
On the subject of licenses, I've swapped everything except the graphics card in this computer, and Windows still hasn't had a whine at me. It'll be interesting to see if it complains when I swap the hard drive out (I'm going to clone it) sometime next week.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 12 September 2010, 07:16:49
I thought MS had to unimplement the hardware configuration tracking thing for legal reasons?
 
I'm pretty sure I saw a labotomizing tool floating around on technet somewhere, years ago. Maybe even a regular MS download or optional windows update.  Change your hardware config (ie, entire machine) unlimited times.
 
I could be wrong. Maybe I'm thinking about a warez product.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: ch_123 on Sun, 12 September 2010, 07:31:59
Perhaps you are thinking of this? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_III#Controversy_about_privacy_issues)

Not sure how the Windows activation process would work without hardware profiling.
Title: Posting on Geekhack: How much RAM and CPU does it take?
Post by: Konrad on Sun, 12 September 2010, 09:53:21
PSN only applies to some Intel P6 (Pentium III, Celeron "II") processors, I think Intel completely abandoned it from Pentium 4 onwards.
 
According to this site (http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1054838.html) the PSN (if present) is a parameter that's used in the "formula" which calculates the GUID string. It looks like basically all unique SMBIOS and firmware which software can read gets involved.
 
I remember buying a new AGP card and reflashing my memory SPD firmware to bump default timing/voltages a little (to enjoy higher performance gain from my new hardware). XP decided that I'd changed "5 pieces of hardware", thus forcing me to endure hours of 1-800-Microsoft bull****.
 
I think my, uh, deactivator software is a warez. Can't find anything of the sort on Technet (although there are XP keygens).