pauses
Posted by
WDSmith
on 2003-04-26 07:39:36 UTC
Could you have too much computer?? :o)
All seriousness aside, as much as I love and rely on DOS, it is NOT an
operating system designed to run on a modern processor. Dramatic increases
in processing power do not bring corresponding increases in DOS speed nor
does the 512 meg of memory. DOS was never intended to take advantage of
these things because they weren't even imagined back then.
This is not to belittle any DOS-based software... I'll give up my DOS when
they pry my cold, dead fingers off the command prompt :o)... but DOS
software frequently runs slower on newer, faster machines than it does on
computers more similar to those it was intended to operate. I've seen it,
measured it, done it, cursed it and everything else. It is a simple fact of
life that hardware manufactured since the late 90s is optimized primarily
for GUI operating sustems.
This is one of the main reasons AMD processors seem to be faster than
corresponding Intel processors. AMD processors are designed almost
exclusively for MS-Windows while Intel makes compromises to accomodate other
operating systems.
I re-hashed this topic with my hardware distributor's head tech just
yesterday while I was waiting for sales to pull my order. Bottom line: you
would probably be way ahead to blow 30 to 75 bucks on a machine from the
tail-end of the DOS era.
WDSmith
(Let the bricks fly :o)
<snip>
Is my computer not fast enough to
All seriousness aside, as much as I love and rely on DOS, it is NOT an
operating system designed to run on a modern processor. Dramatic increases
in processing power do not bring corresponding increases in DOS speed nor
does the 512 meg of memory. DOS was never intended to take advantage of
these things because they weren't even imagined back then.
This is not to belittle any DOS-based software... I'll give up my DOS when
they pry my cold, dead fingers off the command prompt :o)... but DOS
software frequently runs slower on newer, faster machines than it does on
computers more similar to those it was intended to operate. I've seen it,
measured it, done it, cursed it and everything else. It is a simple fact of
life that hardware manufactured since the late 90s is optimized primarily
for GUI operating sustems.
This is one of the main reasons AMD processors seem to be faster than
corresponding Intel processors. AMD processors are designed almost
exclusively for MS-Windows while Intel makes compromises to accomodate other
operating systems.
I re-hashed this topic with my hardware distributor's head tech just
yesterday while I was waiting for sales to pull my order. Bottom line: you
would probably be way ahead to blow 30 to 75 bucks on a machine from the
tail-end of the DOS era.
WDSmith
(Let the bricks fly :o)
<snip>
> A quick run-down of my computer:<snip>
>> PIII 850 with 512 MB RAM
>> Running DOS 6.2 and TurboCNC
Is my computer not fast enough to
>> run this? Do I need more "processing horsepower" to calculate the
>> movement for curves quickly?
>>