[OT] XP and DOS

[Boris Mohar]

Hello,

I am new user to XP. One crucial DOS software that worked well under
Win98 on a P2 also works under XP P4 albeit about ten times slower. The
program is used to lay out PC boards and the slowdown comes when complex
shapes (copper pour) on different layers are required to be filled in. I knew
that there would be some penalty due to emulation but I thought that it would
be made up for by faster processor and graphics card. Apparently not, or am
I doing something wrong? BTW the DOS program is called PCB386+ from Orcad,
now Cadence.

--

Boris Mohar

 

[Chaos Master]

Boris Mohar escreveu:

Hello,

I am new user to XP. One crucial DOS software that worked well under
Win98 on a P2 also works under XP P4 albeit about ten times slower. The
program is used to lay out PC boards and the slowdown comes when complex
shapes (copper pour) on different layers are required to be filled in. I knew
that there would be some penalty due to emulation but I thought that it would
be made up for by faster processor and graphics card. Apparently not, or am
I doing something wrong? BTW the DOS program is called PCB386+ from Orcad,
now Cadence.

Try running it inside DOSBox. http://dosbox.sf.net .

If you have a fast computer the speed will be good.


--
Chaos MasterŽ, posting from Brazil.
"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
I say, I'm in a rock band and I can do what the hell I want!"
-- Amy Lee

The Evanescen(t/ce) HP: http://marreka.no-ip.com
Free energy? It's a lie: http://tinyurl.com/46vru

 

[CFoley1064]

XP and DOS
From: Boris Mohar borism_-void-_@sympatico.ca
Date: 10/12/2004 7:26 AM Central Daylight Time
Message-id: <o4jnm05dmbnsc4682n20d25cl0qp2bfbfs@4ax.com


Hello,

I am new user to XP. One crucial DOS software that worked well under
Win98 on a P2 also works under XP P4 albeit about ten times slower. The
program is used to lay out PC boards and the slowdown comes when complex
shapes (copper pour) on different layers are required to be filled in. I knew
that there would be some penalty due to emulation but I thought that it would
be made up for by faster processor and graphics card. Apparently not, or am
I doing something wrong? BTW the DOS program is called PCB386+ from Orcad,
now Cadence.

--

Boris Mohar

At least it works (apparently -- but can you prove it? Do you have to prove
it?) CAD software is exactly the reason why you should keep an old '486 or
Pentium machine running DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1 around. Life is too short to
worry about stuff like that.

Good luck
Chris

 

[ChrisGibboGibson]

Joerg wrote:

[snip]

My old DOS OrCad zooms, pans, redraws faster on a 66MHz 486 laptop than
other "modern" stuff does on a Pentium more than ten times that clock
speed.

That's a bit posh. I'm running OrCad SDT III on a 10MHz 286 IBM PS 2. I never
have to wait for it.

Why upgrade when it does what I need ?

Gibbo

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <o4jnm05dmbnsc4682n20d25cl0qp2bfbfs@4ax.com>,
Boris Mohar <borism_-void-_@sympatico.ca> wrote:
[...]

works under XP P4 albeit about ten times slower.

That's normal.

[...]

I doing something wrong? BTW the DOS program is called PCB386+ from Orcad,

The old Orcad PCB-II will run under "dosemu" on a linux box. I don't
know about PCB386 though. It may be time to make your machine a dual boot
system.

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Joerg]

Hi Chris,

That's a bit posh. I'm running OrCad SDT III on a 10MHz 286 IBM PS 2. I never
have to wait for it.


Same here, SDT. I used to run it on an industrial strength 10MHz Wang

8086 laptop, the sturdiest laptop I ever had. But it came to grief
because you just couldn't get batteries for it anymore. And its LCD
didn't have back lighting which made it really hard to work during
travel times when other passengers wanted to sleep.

Oh, and this SDT had cost me about $500 way back when. That was a
bargain but nowadays this cost has sharply increased and they try to
make you buy another upgrade every so often.

Why upgrade when it does what I need ?


Exactly. That's also why my biz book keeping is done with MS-Works, in a

DOS compatible file format so I can either use the Works that came with
my new PC or the versions I bought in DOS times, on any machine. It does
everything I need. I bought the old DOS version 2.0 for around $110 and
it was used for book keeping for about 10 years. That boils down to SW
costs of $11 a year, not counting lost interest on those $110. Not bad
indeed. I did a lot of stuff with it that blew finance pros away, like
automatically filling out forms for agencies that insisted on using
their forms. First on a daisy wheel printer with micro stepping, then on
an inkjet. Most of the big bucks software couldn't do that.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Chaos Master]

Boris Mohar escreveu:

Try running it inside DOSBox. http://dosbox.sf.net .

If you have a fast computer the speed will be good.

Thanks. I installed it but I cannot mount a drive. My OS is XP and the
drive partitions are formatted in NTFS format. Is this my problem?

Try typing 'mount' at the 'Z:' DOSbox prompt, it should give the syntax info.
IIRC it's:

MOUNT D C:\


--
Chaos MasterŽ, posting from Brazil.
"People told me I can't dress like a fairy.
I say, I'm in a rock band and I can do what the hell I want!"
-- Amy Lee

The Evanescen(t/ce) HP: http://marreka.no-ip.com
Free energy? It's a lie: http://tinyurl.com/46vru

 

[CFoley1064]

XP and DOS
From: Phil Hobbs hobbs@SpamMeSenseless.us.ibm.com
Date: 10/12/2004 2:08 PM Central Daylight Time
Message-id: <10moashm0ffvd65@corp.supernews.com

I do all my serious writing using WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS. It runs
fine everywhere, speaks Postscript, and on fast hardware, it *flies*.
Oh, yeah, and I don't have to blast down three menu levels every time I
want to use a greek letter.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Amen. Add two words. Reveal Codes.

Game, set, match.

Chris

 

[Joel Kolstad]

"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote in message
news:mZTad.2539$6q2.1656@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...

My old DOS OrCad zooms, pans, redraws faster on a 66MHz 486 laptop than
other "modern" stuff does on a Pentium more than ten times that clock
speed. Sometimes I wonder whether the word 'progress' has been redefined
in some dictionary.

In my estimation a lot of this is programmers shifting to 'still more
abstract' programming language such as Microsoft's .Net languages or Java or
UML, etc... and those testing such programs having fast enough PCs that the
results are deemed 'good enough.' While there are tangible benefits for
certain applications with these newer languages, many companies are
convinced that they'll be left behind technologically if they don't adopt
them. Microsoft's, Sun's, etc.'s marketing machines have no reason to
dissuade this viewpoint either. Hence we've ended up with an ever changing
software development industry where every handful of years a new OS and
programming language comes out... lots of new books are written and sold...
lots of old software is ported to the new language 'line by line' rather
than being re-written from scratch... and the software industry 'helps' the
economy. The rate at which this seems to help the end user is far more
questionable (hence the definition of 'progress'), and the 'churn' rate
seems fast enough that few companies or programmers have enough time to
become true experts in them. You also have to wonder just how out of touch
some companies are when their recruit for, e.g., a C#.Net developer with '5
years of experience' when (at the time) the language hasn't even been out
for as long!

When I do some heavy math on my new laptop the fan comes on and it starts
heating the room. From the battery! The old one running the same math
never does. It didn't need fans...

The real question, though, is: Does the new laptop end up doing more
computations _per joule_? It probably does.

There are still programmers out there who really push for performance, but
these days they seem to be the ones writing device drivers for 3D graphics
cards and the rendering engines that talk to them in a contemporary 3D game
than the folks writing EDA tools.

---Joel Kolstad

 

[Joerg]

Hi Joel,

The real question, though, is: Does the new laptop end up doing more
computations _per joule_? It probably does.


I only look at the net results. That is, the computations it does for my

database because only that matters. And under that scenario the new
laptop performs far less computations per Joule. Its battery boasts at
least twice the capacity yet the available machine runtime doing the
same apps is only a third.

Much of the reason is probably what you outlined in your post. Feature
creep and code bloat. Plus programmers who have no clue as to what
efficiency really means.

This is also a reason why I did not buy a PDA. Casio used to have a nice
full keyboard text entry device, it lasted months on a few cheap AA
cells. "Modern" PDAs run maybe a few hours and entering any amount of
text gives you a cramp in the wrist. Oh, and when the rechargeable
battery dies you have to buy "theirs", at umpteen Dollars a pop. Unless
it's been discontinued....

There are still programmers out there who really push for performance, but
these days they seem to be the ones writing device drivers for 3D graphics
cards and the rendering engines that talk to them in a contemporary 3D game
than the folks writing EDA tools.


That tells us that kids are a bigger market than corporate clients.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com