On Mon, 2 Oct 2000 04:57:04 +1000, Ben Hood wrote:
> On 30 Sep 2000, at 19:50, Robert Deering wrote:
>> ... or a CD burner. Any way to put that image on an HD and use it?
> The 1.4M disk is still available, at least from my local mirror -
> http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/qnx/demodisk/
'Twas this disk that had me waiting anxiously for the larger release.
The floppy is a _demo_ of what QNX can do, not a QNX distribution by any
means. Now, I really don't mind sending 30 USD for the CD from QNX, but
the demo hasn't given me enough of an idea of QNX to spend the money.
>> It's become quite plain that to do anything with a _reasonable_ machine
>> (a 286/12 is reasonable, a 386SX moreso, anything > p120 is absurd) one
> Please explain why/how >p120 is absurd.
An overstatement (not greatly, tho) to provoke comment. It worked...
<>
> later. An operation that took 16 hours on a K6-2/400 takes 5 hours
> on my new Duron 650. Imagine how long anything less would take,
> not to mention overheads of processing 4GB of data).
Any time a 650MHz processor requires 5 hours to process 4GB of data, no
matter _what_ the task, something is wrong. Chances are that most of
this trip is unnecessary. If the task were set up from boot by a
programmer dedicated to sensible code, the Duron could do it in 30 or 40
minutes. I've seen such accomplished before. Properly instructed, my
286/287 could probably do it (given enough storage) in about 3 1/2 hrs.
My XT (no 87) might take 12 to 16. It's all the _unnecessary_ overhead
that existed before this application was introduced, and the additional,
_unnecessary_ overhead of the program used.
My point being that better programming negates the need for super
machines for most users. Sloppy cut-paste non-programming is _seemingly_
quicker to do, so it _looks_ more profitable. Someone's recent post (I
think it was this list) about so-called "market forces" was right on.
The majority will never insist on getting real value from their
machines, but there's no reason for a very large minority (that has
members on this list) can't do enough insisting to get something done.
There're many ways to instist. The main one is simply not to take what
is offered.
> Even HTML rendering can take a bit of CPU power. Look how slow
> Arachne is!
There's a lot I'd wish to say here, but I'm using Arachne by the good
grace of Michael Polak. I pay for programs that I intend to keep using.
I've wanted to replace Arachne for quite a while, but I've been putting
it off until I find another OS; despite my desire to keep things
accessible for everyone, even I have to admit that 8.3 filenames make a
lousy internet standard. Much of the information I need is accessible as
zipped HTML websites. Naturally, I have to do quite a bit of work with
them to get the references to match on a 6-type DOS. Thus the interest
in QNX.
> ....hmm this has deviated somewhat from QNX. (That I haven't even
> tried yet)
Oh - is that what this was about? ;-}
-- Arachne V1.66, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
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