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This is the OS post to end all OS posts. The ultimate OS/memory
reference to the hundreds of questions posted each year on this list.
Thanks Kent.
dbs
Kent Rollins wrote:
> Jim is essentially correct here. The fundamental issues are pre-emptive
> multitasking vs cooperative multitasking.
>
> Windows 3.1 relies on cooperative multitasking. It depends on other
> applications to relinquish control of the CPU in order to run itself and
> other applications. Also, Windows 3.1 is not much more than a shell on top
> of DOS. It has very, very little overhead compared to 95 or NT. Remember,
> Win3.1 would run on a machine with 640K of RAM or less. Because it relied
> on other apps to be good neighbors and not keep the CPU too long, you are at
> the mercy of the other applications on the system. Unfortunately, if an
> application takes a long time to load, TS4 will be locked up for this time.
> Aside from some of the already mentioned limitations, the 2 biggest
> limitations in Win3.1 are memory and OS protection. The largest block of
> memory you can allocate with Win3.1 is 64K. This in turn leads to the
> resource limitation which limits the number of applications you can run and
> the amount of certain types of memory they can run. The 64K limitation is
> also the reason for the 13,000 bar limit in TS4 and the reason why systems
> run out of memory. The OS protection issue is not always a problem if you
> are running stable applications. If you are running unstable applications
> however, any one of them can crash the entire operating system.
>
> Win95/98 on the other hand uses pre-emptive multitasking which means the OS
> can interrupt any application, anytime. It interrupts applications several
> times per second to allow other applications to run. (Un)fortunately, when
> Microsoft wrote 95, they went to extremes in order to be compatible with the
> large base of Win3.1 software that was already out there. One of the worst
> side effects of this effort was that 95 uses a resource allocation scheme
> that is very similar to Win3.1 which is why Win95 users have to buy products
> like MemTurbo and the like to overcome slowdown and resource limitation
> issues. Win95 also uses a lot of the code that Win3.1 uses and it has a
> similar lack of protection for the OS internals which means that errant apps
> can crash it with little more difficulty. Microsoft was forced into this
> compatibility decision because IBM was making a very serious effort at the
> time to get OS/2 v2 going in the marketplace and Microsoft thought
> abandoning it's large W3.1 base was a bad move. Like most engineering
> projects that get wagged by marketing, the result is less than a technical
> marvel. I view Win95/98 as nearly a crime against consumers. Microsoft
> should abandon all improvements to this line and shift the resources to
> migrating consumers to the NT/2K line. I have never installed 95/98 on a
> system for anything other than compatibility testing and I never, never
> will. Win95/98 has about 50% of the CPU drag and 70% of the memory
> requirements of NT and provides almost none of the stability and doesn't
> eliminate the resource problem.
>
> Window NT was written from scratch to be a real 32-bit, fully pre-emptive
> multitasking operating system. The project was headed up by Dave Cutler,
> the guy who headed up Digital's VMS operating system development. I've
> never used VMS, but 2 programmers I've met who have worked with it say it
> was the best operating system they've ever used. NT was originally going to
> be IBM's OS/2 3.0 but Microsoft and IBM had their split in the early 90's
> and that was that. There is a great book called Show Stopper (which I
> haven't read) that details the 5-year struggle of passionate and talented
> developers working long hours and under incredible stress to get NT out the
> door. I first started using NT when it was in late beta. Prior to that I
> had been developing Win3.1 and DOS software. When you develop on those
> platforms, you get used to rebooting your computer literally 5-10 times an
> hour. That is not an exageration. The only upside is that DOS boots quick.
> When I started working under NT, it was like night and day. Suddenly, my
> computer stayed up all day long and only the software I was developing
> crashed. It pure heaven. NT adds a little more CPU overhead than Win95/98
> and requires a little more memory. And I think a lot of people get the
> impression that NT is a lot more complicated to use the Windows 95. It
> isn't. The interface still has push buttons and check boxes. TradeStation
> looks the same. Just don't install the WebDesktop and you're fine. And W2K
> is even more stable than NT. I have installed W2K on about 4 machines and
> on 2 of those it told me it was missing a driver on installation, but it
> still managed to install a working driver and I haven't had to mess with
> those machines again. I can't install W2K on my primary development system
> for compatibility reasons but I'm going to upgrade as soon as possible and
> I'm leaving NT4 on my TS4 system because I generally take the
> if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it approach.
>
> For those of you who are having memory problems and considering installing
> something like MemTurbo, do yourself a favor and solve your problems once
> and for all: install W2K. It's a real operating system. The interface is
> nearly identical to 95/98. You might have to add some memory to your system
> but memory isn't that expensive compared to all the time you have to spend
> futzing around klunky software. It's bad enough that you have to use some
> version of TradeStation.
>
> Kent
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Osborn <jimo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Thursday, July 20, 2000 4:15 PM
> Subject: Re: TS4 and Windows 3.1?
>
> "Cash" <cashc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >We all know that the higher version of Windows you get, the more overhead
> >you have.
> >
> >So, I was wondering if you only wanted to run TS4 on a power-house
> >machine (800mhz+) and had Win3.1 as your operating system, would that be
> >a faster, less problematic solution than Win95,98,2000?
> >
> >Has anyone investigated this?
>
> When I asked this question of a Microsoft software engineer, he replied
> that it depended mainly on how many tasks you were asking your computer
> to do. If, like me, TS4 is your only application, so that Windows is
> nothing but a wrapper for that application, then Win3.1 is the choice.
>
> Mine does just fine collecting the CME from BMI satellite with a T-port
> on a 486-66 machine with 32Meg of ram. Others have mentioned the
> name-length limitations of Win3.1, but I doubt that that's a problem
> with TS4. If you're trying to deal with thousands of stocks or
> something else fancy, you might run into memory-handling limitations
> in Win3.1; I don't know what those limitations are, but I suspect
> there are some.
>
> If you need to run lots of applications at the same time as TS, you're
> better off with Win95/98/2000. I've been advised that Win95 has much
> less overhead than any of the other 32-bit choices, and would be the
> only thing possible on my 486, should I want to "upgrade" say, for
> networking purposes (I don't anticipate adding any other apps to that
> machine).
>
> Jim
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