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HX question about link.exe (DOSX)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 30.07.2008, 00:54

> > Why are MS OSes always really really bad cooperating with others??w!
>
> While agreed in general, (and even in this case), the root cause is a bit
> different. I suspect one of the OSes has a different view of harddisk
I guess it just assumes that Windows was hosed so that they won't get tons of support calls saying, "I can't boot anymore!" (Better safe than sorry?)

> > Isn't Xen not in the kernel tree unlike LVM
>
> Emulators are quite slow, so I decided to go with
> hypervisors. It worked fine for a while, but it broke with Fedora 7, and
> never was fixed since.
I've never tried Fedora, but from what I've heard (re: 9) is that it has lots of new, cutting edge stuff that is nice except that it's somewhat unstable / less stable than you'd like. Some people adore it, some complain about it (and Ubuntu too) in that regard.

> There is not much difference between running in 16-bit programs on a
> 32-bit OS and 32-bit in a 64-bit process.
I would have to run DOSEMU x86-64 to really see how good / bad performance is. So far, I haven't (since I'm too dumb to compile it myself; too bad no distros come with it). If anybody here ever tries it, I'm interested in your results (although I have no intention of running x86-64 full-time).

> > Sounds almost not even worth it. :-/
>
> Under Linux less even, since Linux supports PAE and 32-bit Linux has
> access to the full 4GB.
FreeBSD supposedly supports it, but kernel + modules must all be compiled with that in mind (according to Wikipedia). I don't think most home users have more than 4 GB (at most) just yet.

> > > I read up a lot on 64-bits programming and the summary is that rule
> of
> > > thumb, general purpose code is slightly slower.
> >
> > Maybe that's an implementation issue that will be fixed in later
> models??
>
> Yes and no. It is simply the average larger data size. So unless you have
> 32-bit bins or some form of a NEAR model.
So what is the advantage of 64-bit then?? If more registers doesn't equal more speed but uses more memory, then it's crap, just a novelty, not worth bothering with.

> Btw, in general GCC is worse in CPU specific optimizations than other
> compilers.
What other compilers? I'll admit GCC is pretty darn good but could indeed be improved (in theory, I dunno how). Intel's doesn't count because it's expensive. Okay, yes, MSVC is supposedly better now, but it's only got one platform + architecture to target, so it's probably easier / simpler.

> The main bottle necks of the avg application are the heapmanager and the
> memory move function. And in the latter, it helps a lot if you can use
> SIMD instructions which move with larger granularity. x86 was always a bit
> ackward in this regard, compared to e.g. an 68040 that could move 16 bytes
> in one instruction in the early nineties already.
Did you ever have one of those? I didn't, but I think the Atari Falcon used one (which IIRC was at one time development platform for their Jaguar console).

According to Darek Mihocka, he was able to emulate an Atari ST ("Gemulator") at full speed on a 486 in 1992. (This is also the same guy who sped up BOCHS recently.) Heck, he got BOCHS running on his PS3.

> Yes, but you can't introduce a whole new architecture every two years.
> Till now it happened twice. The i386 and the x86_64. All x86_64 machines
> have SSE2.
They sell these machines because they are either more powerful and/or faster than their predecessors. "Run your favorite apps in half the time!" or "30% speedups!" In reality, they do run better/cooler/quieter, but it's more unnecessary upgrades. I personally prefer software optimization over hardware upgrades because the former benefits everyone while the latter only benefits you (and potentially wastes money). The idea that our computers are 1000x stronger than 10 years ago astonishes me because we aren't able to do 1000x more stuff (only maybe five or ten, if even).

There should probably be a). media PCs, b). gaming PCs, c). legacy / work PCs, and d). bleeding edge / experimental PCs. (I mean, I doubt I'll ever use / need Direct X 10 because I'm not a PC gamer. And x86-64 is of no use to me now if the only tangible advantage is access to > 4 GB RAM.)

> > Microsoft basically started over from scratch with the XBox360 because
> it
> > uses a PowerPC-ish cpu (tri-core 3.2 Ghz) unlike the previous Intel
> PIII
> > Celeron 733 Mhz.
>
> You can always much freer in chosing an embedded CPU. While there might
> be some legacy concerns, they are generally less.
I don't know about your experiences or what languages / cpus you've programmed for, but what is your favorite architecture (if any) and why (price and power consumption not considered)? In other words, is 68000 better than i386 in your eyes?

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