Figured out how to max out a dual Xeon 2.8 machine...

[Santilli]

You watch a DVD on one screen, rip another in a another DVD reader,
And open IE, and type this in another.

Amazing part is, all works and goes smoothly...

s

 

[Tannin]

I confess to feeling a little tolerant scorn when I see someone suddenly discover the sort of effortless multitasking ability that I used to take for granted ten years ago (and on far more modest hardware). Or, for that matter, the sort of ability that Amiga users claimed to have substantially more than ten years ago, on hardware so modest that it seems quite laughable. (I never really saw this Amiga magic demonstrated for myself, but I have no reason to doubt it.)

Mr Santilli, you should have been born ten years earlier and been an OS/2 user. OS/2 and high-performance SCSI drives, by the way, made (and still make) a very sweet combination.

And for all you misguided Windows lovers out there (both of you!) I'l also mention that recent Windows versions (i.e., W2K SP2 or better, or even XP if you can stand the horrible user interface) have finally achieved something that vaguely approaches (but still cannot match) the same sort of ability, though they continue to need a truck load of extra hardware to manage it gracefully.

 

[Bozo]

BeOS was also a great operating system for multi-tasking. I loaded it in a PII 300 with 128 Meg Ram box and demonstrated it to a MAC diehard. He couldn't believe what was he was seeing. Two demo videos running in separate windows and you could still use the system for word processing. And not a glitch in anything running. Shame it never took off.


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

Funny Tannin, but not only computers, but that extra ten years would have been nice. 10 years of Hawaii with less crowds, etc. for surfing...

s

 

[Mercutio]

Linux on modern hardware, if you run a lightweight GUI (or best of all, do everything from console) and not GNOME/KDE, is un-frickin' real.

Of course, it doesn't look as nice, but who gives a crap? It's marvelously fast.

 

[Santilli]

I've thought about installing it on a couple of extra boxes I've got around here, but I don't have room to set them up, really.

Guess I could use Linux for email. Any virus problems?

s

 

[Adcadet]

BeOS was also a great operating system for multi-tasking. I loaded it in a PII 300 with 128 Meg Ram box and demonstrated it to a MAC diehard. He couldn't believe what was he was seeing. Two demo videos running in separate windows and you could still use the system for word processing. And not a glitch in anything running. Shame it never took off.


Bozo :mrgrn:

I loved BeOS on my dual celeron 300 machine with 128 MB of RAM. Awesome combo. Smoothest OS "feel" I've ever felt.

 

[Santilli]

Is it still avaliable for macs, and, if so, what's the hardware support like?

s

 

[Bozo]

Try here. It's BeOS under a new name.

http://www.yellowtab.com/

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Grim]

Or, for that matter, the sort of ability that Amiga users claimed to have substantially more than ten years ago, on hardware so modest that it seems quite laughable. (I never really saw this Amiga magic demonstrated for myself, but I have no reason to doubt it.)

I have, in fact, seen the wonder that was the Amiga. I think the most amazing thing about it was the extent that the Microsoft coders went to serialize a box that was built from the ground up to be an asymetric multiprocessing machine. I have also seen an Amiga with some critical Microsoft routines replaced (for example, the diskette interface); that system put my first Linux box (a Pentium system) to shame.

I could ramble on about it at some length, if people were interested.

 

[Buck]

I could ramble on about it at some length, if people were interested.

Why not, nobody ever stops Tannin, and he never asks.

 

[Mercutio]

Dammit Buck, you just made tea (the beverage, not our own hairy aussie) come out my nose!

 

[Dr Bombcrater]

I have also seen an Amiga with some critical Microsoft routines replaced (for example, the diskette interface); that system put my first Linux box (a Pentium system) to shame.

The operating system on the Amiga had nothing to do with Microsoft, Grim. They supplied the a crappy Basic interpereter that nobody ever used, and even that was replaced fairly early on.

I do agree that the Amiga was a really nice, smooth system. I've been running various Amigas since 1988 and never quite found anything comparable to them. People always comment on how great the Amiga hardware was, but the OS was responsible for a huge part of their general funkyness.

Neither of the AmigaOS machines I run here have a single Commodore custom chip in them - one is an Athlon XP system running AmigaOS 3.9 via the Amithlon emulator/HAL system, the other is an AmigaOne PowerPC box with a beta copy of AmigaOS 4.0 - and they're still more useful and pleasant to use than any mainstream OS.

 

[Grim]

I have also seen an Amiga with some critical Microsoft routines replaced (for example, the diskette interface); that system put my first Linux box (a Pentium system) to shame.

The operating system on the Amiga had nothing to do with Microsoft, Grim. They supplied the a crappy Basic interpereter that nobody ever used, and even that was replaced fairly early on.

I recall seeing an MS copyright tag in what I recall thinking was a kernel binary. I also recall the disassembled code having a similar feel to the C64 kernel. (Style, not what it did. What it did was vastly different, due to different hardware.) Admittedly, this was well over 10 years ago (maybe 1990?), so my memory is somewhat foggy here.

 

[LunarMist]

Greg,

Can you do run four simultaneous instances of RAR (with encryption) from four source hard drives to four target drives? That is a killer on my single CPU machine.

 

[Santilli]

LM: I don't use RAR, or encryption for that matter. I've tried MSFT's disk compression on my two backup drives, and the time it takes to run is not worth the savings in disk space. That's why I have the SCA box on this machine.

For what it's worth, the compression utility did soak up some of the cpu power, and it was slow.

s