XPost: rec.arts.comics.strips   
   From: petertrei@gmail.com   
      
   On 10/19/2025 10:04 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:   
   > Lynn McGuire   wrote:   
   >> So you are going stop porting mainframe software down to the PCs, a   
   >> trend that got started in 1987 with the 80386 ?   
   >>   
   >> We actually supported our mainframe software on the PC in 1984 using the   
   >> IBM AT/370 board running at 0.5 mips and 0.1 mflops with 6 MB of ram   
   >> soldered to a full length daughter board for $14,000 each, including MVS   
   >> (IIRC, maybe was CMS).  I am fairly sure that we sold over a thousand of   
   >> these for IBM.  The 80386 / 80387 combo was a welcome change for   
   >> mainframe software porting down to the PC.   
   >   
   > There are currently serious issues with code bloat with commercial software   
   > because as Mr. Gates says, "people don't buy new versions for bug fixes,   
   > they buy it for new features."  So we have small applications like Matlab   
   > which was a great engineering math package that ran in 4Mb on the Sun 4,   
   > and we add stuff and add stuff and now we have a bloated mess that barely   
   > shambles along on a 16GB PC.   
   >   
   > I once took apart a factory automation system on a Vax and figured out   
   > what it was actually doing... it had many data entry screens, and it had   
   > all kinds of internal databases.... but really all it needed to be doing   
   > was to talk to a PLC, take user input to send to the PLC, and take data   
   > from the PLC to put unsorted into six flat files which would get uploaded   
   > to an IBM.  It came in around 300,000 lines of code and I replaced it with   
   > about 500 lines of python.   
      
   I recently got into 3d printing. I have a newish gaming laptop that had   
   16Gb of RAM - a number which would have been beyond impressive just   
   15 years ago.  It was literally a million times the RAM I took home in   
   my first computer (Apple ][+).   
      
   The main SW that runs on the PC is 'Bambu Labs', which turns STL files   
   into printer-specific commands and sends it to the printer. The original   
   version I installed ran fine, but then Bambu brought out a new version.   
      
   It wouldn't run in 16Gb, even with everything else shut down. I bumped   
   the ram to 64 Gb, and now it runs.   
      
   I guess I'm old, since I find this mind-boggling.   
      
   pt   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)