Re: Megademo

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <3ibogv$q8n@tusk.lm.com>,
Matt Portune <mportune@telerama.lm.com> wrote:
>I have another question.  I know demos require their own booting, etc. 
>but wouldn't demos like this be programmable to run and launch on the 
>hard drive?  I love demos, but I'm jealous of all my PC buddies who can 
>just launch them like a program.  Is it impossible on a GS?

   Just like a program? I'd estimate that 1/3 to 3/4 of the IBM demos
end up requiring you to muck around with your setup, freeing up more
of that base 640K crud, drivers, interrupts, and everything else. Yeah,
you could run them off a HD, but it takes a ton of work.

   I'd say the reason why IBM democoders tend to make HD'able stuff is
that everyone over in IBM land has a HD (unless you have a really old
286, or you've got a weirdball configuration), especially the coders,
but the GS, this isn't nearly the case. Stuff by people with HDs
(GS<>IRC) tends to be more HD-able than others. [Well, DigitalExodus
is sorta an exception... they had HDs, made a 3.5" booting disk]

   Also, after booting into DOS, unless you've got a bunch of
weirdball TSRs, you don't have many interrupts firing off eating
time. After booting to GS/OS, you tend to get a bunch of programs on
the HB queue, and such.  When timing's critical, it's easier to tell
people to reboot than be smart and code around that.


Nathan Mates
-- 
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