PC 4GB RAM limit

kony writes:

Until then, I won't bother using an ineffective modern
system to reply to your posts.

When you say this more than once, it kind of negates itself.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

On Tue, 24 May 2005 20:17:33 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:

kony writes:

Until then, I won't bother using an ineffective modern
system to reply to your posts.

When you say this more than once, it kind of negates itself.

Naw, it was advanced warning....
Abacus construction begins tomorrow.

Mxsmanic wrote:
David Maynard writes:


I have no problem if you want to say your personal criteria is 1/60'th of a
second but I do have a problem with you saying "instantaneously" and then
claiming 1/60'th is "synonymous," because it isn't.


Perceptually it is. The threshold varies with a number of physiological
and environmental variables, but 1/60 second is pretty safe for video
displays.

Doesn't matter how much you explain 'circumstances', they're not synonyms.

Just as "20 lbs" and "dog" are not synonyms just because someone's dog
might happen to weigh 20 lbs.

There are many times when a 1/60'th of a second response would be
disastrously inadequate. Not necessarily in a 'GUI' but for other things.


If it's not in a GUI, why mention it?

Because it shows that 1/60'th of a second and "instantaneous" are not only
not synonyms but that it matters.


And you base that on what?


On all the monitors and video boards that do it routinely.

Do what routinely?

It really is nutty for you to snip context and especially when the only
reference you leave is "that."

Assuming it isn't, and that's it's possible, the likely reasons are 1.
people are unwilling to sacrifice other specifications for it, 2. not
enough people give a tinker's dam if it's slower than 1/60'th of a second,
or a combination of the two.


Mostly (2). Besides which many people are used to waiting and don't
realize that they don't necessarily have to wait.


I hate to burst your bubble but Microsoft has done a lot more studying of
what people like/dislike in a GUI than you have.

Mxsmanic wrote:

David Maynard writes:


No one claimed everyone had a PC and no one claimed all sales are to 'new
owners'. The point of discussion was your claim that, outside of the world
of geeks, "almost no part of it is interested in computers, in any form."
And the magnitude of sales indicates otherwise as you don't have to sell
one to every soul on the planet just to demonstrate an interest by more
than "almost no part"


The magnitude of sales isn't that great.

No, it *is* 'that' great, it just isn't 'that' great. LOL

What nonsense.

Twelve billion dollars is only
about $40 per person in the U.S., which roughly implies that only one
American in ten or twenty is buying a computer.

A invalid analysis that not only ignores infants and others who are not
participants in the market, but families who use one computer for more than
one person and that one year of sales is only one year of sales, when the
discussion was about how many people 'have' computers (as part of your
fallacious argument it's equivalent to how many may, or may not, 'want
one'), not how many bought one in 2003 alone.

And PC penetration is
very high in the U.S.; it is dramatically lower in most other countries.

There are a lot of things that are "very high" in the U.S. compared to
"most other countries." That says nothing about whether they'd *like* to
have them.

Not to mention that "other countries' are not the U.S. market.


A PDA isn't a desktop, nor is it intended to be a desktop.


Then assimilating it with desktops is fallacious, isn't it?

Yes, so why did you do it?


You tell me since you're the one who claimed it's "fat."


I don't have exact figures, but I'm certain it is easily ten times what
it is for, say, commodity items like foods, which often have razor-thin
margins. It may even approach or surpass the margins of luxury items
such as perfume (50% or more).

Transalated to plain English, you don't know and have nothing to base it on
either.


I didn't say a thing about margins and didn't intend to, so your 'rebut' is
arguing against nothing.


Since I spoke specifically of margins, what does this imply?

A couple of things. For one, it 'implies' you're intentionally
misrepresenting the case because 'you' spoke of more than just "margins."
Which likely explains why you snipped all context of it and my reply.

It also implies that you didn't read, or can't comprehend, the simple
English sentence where I explicitly stated my point.

Conor wrote:

In article , Mxsmanic
says...

Conor writes:


Why would I need to?

Because volatile RAM is erased when you turn the power off, which isn't
much use if you need to write out data that is permanent. That's why
disks exist.



Who says you need to turn the machine off? Also have you never heard of
NVRAM?


He'll just change the complaint to something else.

kony wrote:

On Mon, 23 May 2005 19:19:38 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:



Apathy set in before I nailed down a speed, 600MHz P3 was
too slow, 1.3GHz Tualatin Celeron handled it with a little
to spare. 1.1GHz Celeron couldn't cut it but I'm fairly
sure it was the poor Sis integrated video that was the
larger (if not only) bottleneck.

I too would suggest it was the SIS because I use ~1.35 gig tualatins (one a
mildly overclocked 1.2 and the other an overclocked 1.1) for a couple of
small HTPCs (two different rooms) and there is moderate room to spare.


Yes Sis integrated video on S370 was a poor joke, taking
same general system config but running from a BX board with
just about any old AGP card made even 2D faster.

Yes, my tualatin machines are all separate AGP except for the Asus P2B-VM
but it's built-in video is an ATI Rage chip with it's own video RAM, not
'shared memory'. It truly is a built-in 'AGP card'. Good 15 buck motherboard

Even a box
here with Celeron 500 & i810 video without
dedicated/discrete frame buffer onboard was faster than the
Sis video when it had a 33MHz higher memory & front side
busses.

That highlights the RAM load. The extra bandwidth helps to compensate for
the shared memory, but i810 video is still a dog for anything but 2D.

I admit I was a bit surprised at just how much power real time encoding
consumes, though. They're enough for what I'm doing but not for a 'full
featured' HTPC.


Yep, I had a T'Bred @ 1.8GHz encoding @ 640x480 ok, "medium"
quality Divx v3.11 then v5.0(n). Later (unsure of version,
maybe 5.1 or 5.2) Divx versions have more optimizations for
modern CPUs but also effectively redefine what "medium"
quality is, calling what was formerly high quality/slowest,
now medium quality.


Yeah, my XP 2000+ is the 'workhorse' machine, mainly because it sits in the
most convenient hole, but I use the 3400+ for encoding and, even then, it
takes seemingly forever.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but people have this notion they'll just 'zip'
through a DVD, but it don't. Takes a lot of crunching for that.

On Tue, 24 May 2005 20:18:12 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Even a box
here with Celeron 500 & i810 video without
dedicated/discrete frame buffer onboard was faster than the
Sis video when it had a 33MHz higher memory & front side
busses.

That highlights the RAM load. The extra bandwidth helps to compensate for
the shared memory, but i810 video is still a dog for anything but 2D.

Yep, but it highlights how poor the SIS was even more, since
it should've easily outperformed the i810 due to the faster
memory bus or at least been close enough that in 2D you
couldn't tell a difference.

Sis did screwy things with their drivers then too, some sort
of incrementing a frame counter without actually rendering
the frame... some had speculated that it was to appear
better on benchmarks (or rather, not as poor).


I admit I was a bit surprised at just how much power real time encoding
consumes, though. They're enough for what I'm doing but not for a 'full
featured' HTPC.


Yep, I had a T'Bred @ 1.8GHz encoding @ 640x480 ok, "medium"
quality Divx v3.11 then v5.0(n). Later (unsure of version,
maybe 5.1 or 5.2) Divx versions have more optimizations for
modern CPUs but also effectively redefine what "medium"
quality is, calling what was formerly high quality/slowest,
now medium quality.


Yeah, my XP 2000+ is the 'workhorse' machine, mainly because it sits in the
most convenient hole, but I use the 3400+ for encoding and, even then, it
takes seemingly forever.

I use Divx most often for realtime TV recording, setting the
keyframe threshold low enough that odds are high I'd be able
to cut commercials on keyframes if desired.


I'm exaggerating, of course, but people have this notion they'll just 'zip'
through a DVD, but it don't. Takes a lot of crunching for that.


Yep, it's not as bad if you can dedicate a box to it, though
after I upgraded my lan to GbE I just started doing ISOs
then plaing 'em back with Daemon Tools and whichever DVD
software. As I don't generally keep 'em archived forever, I
can recoup the HDD space if/when needed.

kony wrote:
On Tue, 24 May 2005 20:18:12 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:



Even a box
here with Celeron 500 & i810 video without
dedicated/discrete frame buffer onboard was faster than the
Sis video when it had a 33MHz higher memory & front side
busses.

That highlights the RAM load. The extra bandwidth helps to compensate for
the shared memory, but i810 video is still a dog for anything but 2D.


Yep, but it highlights how poor the SIS was even more, since
it should've easily outperformed the i810 due to the faster
memory bus or at least been close enough that in 2D you
couldn't tell a difference.

Oops. Sorry, I misread that. I thought you were talking about the 810
typically running the memory 33 Mhz faster than the FSB.


Sis did screwy things with their drivers then too, some sort
of incrementing a frame counter without actually rendering
the frame... some had speculated that it was to appear
better on benchmarks (or rather, not as poor).

I don't know what is it with SIS but they don't seem to be able to make a
decent video chipset even if their life depended on it.


I admit I was a bit surprised at just how much power real time encoding
consumes, though. They're enough for what I'm doing but not for a 'full
featured' HTPC.


Yep, I had a T'Bred @ 1.8GHz encoding @ 640x480 ok, "medium"
quality Divx v3.11 then v5.0(n). Later (unsure of version,
maybe 5.1 or 5.2) Divx versions have more optimizations for
modern CPUs but also effectively redefine what "medium"
quality is, calling what was formerly high quality/slowest,
now medium quality.


Yeah, my XP 2000+ is the 'workhorse' machine, mainly because it sits in the
most convenient hole, but I use the 3400+ for encoding and, even then, it
takes seemingly forever.


I use Divx most often for realtime TV recording, setting the
keyframe threshold low enough that odds are high I'd be able
to cut commercials on keyframes if desired.

All things considered I get better performance from the MS Media 9 codec
when live encoding but if I want to archive I'll record raw and encode
later because my little tualatins just don't have enough 'oomph' to
compress real time at the highest settings.

But then I don't do 'automatic' commercial cutting, I manually edit.


I'm exaggerating, of course, but people have this notion they'll just 'zip'
through a DVD, but it don't. Takes a lot of crunching for that.



Yep, it's not as bad if you can dedicate a box to it, though
after I upgraded my lan to GbE I just started doing ISOs
then plaing 'em back with Daemon Tools and whichever DVD
software. As I don't generally keep 'em archived forever, I
can recoup the HDD space if/when needed.


Most of the encoding I do is from broadcast and then to CD/DVD if I want to
archive.

Btw, old Black and White movies compress REAL well. LOL

AT wrote:
On 22 May 2005 10:51:55 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:


In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

David Maynard writes:


"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Ken Olsen, the founder & CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation

That is still largely true today. An important limiting factor on PC
sales today is the fact that many people just don't want a PC.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.


Most don't "want" their own 21 inch TV, either. One or two per
household is a huge market.

BTW: the famous Olsen quote is out of context according to Schein (who
worked for Olsen for about 30 years) in his recent book _DEC Is Dead,
Long Live DEC_. What Olsen said was that people didn't want PCs doing
stupid things like keeping track of what's in you refrigerator. That
being said, he did effectivley veto product proposals that may have
beat Compaq at it's own game (Compaq did not yet exist when Olsen made
this quote.)

(Don't argue with me about this. I'm only quoting the book)


The funny thing was Olsen said it just as the early DEC machines (PDP1-9, early
11s and 15s) were heading for retirement - though still useful (Unix and B were
designed on a PDP-7 that Bell Labs had sitting in a corner) - and those old
machines were showing up in dorm rooms, home basements and garages, anyplace we
could find enough relatively vermin-free space for a mini or a midi (remember it
was an "acquired" long dusty 8-I from a university basement pile or a
multi-thousand Altaire at best, and the Altaire had less-available softweare or
storage power.

More important, I think is the Micro$oft quote that "no one will need more than
640K"

Except Bill Gates never said it.


Incidently, C. Gorden Bell and team are still hard at work at MS trying to make
the computer a sensible kitchen appliance, a perfect memory-of-your-life
program, etc. and he was only Olsen's RH man.

Olsen was out of power long before the microP really came into being, pre-Q
creaton I believe.

Olsen was replaced as CEO in 1992.

DEC should have stuck to its guns with a real replacement for
the PDP 11 - VAX family beyond Alpha, and kept its original customer base
happy, rather than trying to build everything from the heavy iron that ran the
early Internet if it hadn't been based on VAXen, the Morris bug would have
failed to desktop users with expensive Rainbows, DECMates and VAXStations.

When Olsen was in charge, DEC was the computer company students loved best -
because it was dedicated to HANDS ON machines that filled the need of anyone who
needed a computer (except big iron that didn't timeshare like mad or pitifully
powerless at the time desktops. Every student had full sets of DEC manuals for
the ASKING and access to company support and...

well, what kind of computer do you think they specified when they got out of
school?

Besides, it was fun, and everyone enjoyed.

In article ,
David Maynard wrote:
AT wrote:
On 22 May 2005 10:51:55 -0400, (Al Dykes) wrote:


In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

David Maynard writes:


"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Ken Olsen, the founder & CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation

That is still largely true today. An important limiting factor on PC
sales today is the fact that many people just don't want a PC.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.


Most don't "want" their own 21 inch TV, either. One or two per
household is a huge market.

BTW: the famous Olsen quote is out of context according to Schein (who
worked for Olsen for about 30 years) in his recent book _DEC Is Dead,
Long Live DEC_. What Olsen said was that people didn't want PCs doing
stupid things like keeping track of what's in you refrigerator. That
being said, he did effectivley veto product proposals that may have
beat Compaq at it's own game (Compaq did not yet exist when Olsen made
this quote.)

(Don't argue with me about this. I'm only quoting the book)


The funny thing was Olsen said it just as the early DEC machines (PDP1-9, early
11s and 15s) were heading for retirement - though still useful (Unix and B were
designed on a PDP-7 that Bell Labs had sitting in a corner) - and those old
machines were showing up in dorm rooms, home basements and garages, anyplace we
could find enough relatively vermin-free space for a mini or a midi (remember it
was an "acquired" long dusty 8-I from a university basement pile or a
multi-thousand Altaire at best, and the Altaire had less-available softweare or
storage power.

More important, I think is the Micro$oft quote that "no one will need more than
640K"

Except Bill Gates never said it.


And the 640k line is not Bill's fault. IBM designed the ROM BIOS and
nailed the address at 640k. Prior to that I guess everything was
bootstraped in on each boot.



Incidently, C. Gorden Bell and team are still hard at work at MS trying to make
the computer a sensible kitchen appliance, a perfect memory-of-your-life
program, etc. and he was only Olsen's RH man.

Olsen was out of power long before the microP really came into being, pre-Q
creaton I believe.

Olsen was replaced as CEO in 1992.

Olsen had given up some power to a management team long before he
left, but it was too late. Some of us think DEC lost it's soul as
early as 1984.

--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.