Profile for Dougal

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Email: Private ICQ: AOL: Yahoo:	Username: Dougal Realname: Michael Dales About me: I'm a Unix geek, not a RISC OS person, but wrote the Mac OS X port of ArcEm as I'm a sucker. Homepage: http://homepage.mac.com/mdales/ Face/Logo: Comments posted: 149 (show all)

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On ROL extends Select offer through January:

You know the world has flipped when people start touting Apple's products as teh example of cheap equipment Dougal on 19/01/05 11:22PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On United at long last:

Sawadee: Indeed, an excellent idea which worked so well for OS/2, NeXT step, BeOS... (just to mention stuff available for ix86 at some point). It also explains the dominance of Mac OS X with it's 96.3% market share. Oh, wait a minute... Today's moral: the best product, doesn't necessarily win. Dougal on 17/07/04 10:45AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Expo show whisperings:

mrtd: "I don't think VARPC will kill the market. There are two many people about, myself included, who will not buy Microsoft products at any price." Do you mean that, or do you mean "There are too many people about, myself included, who will not buy non RISC OS products at any price."? There are alternatives to Microsoft you know Dougal on 21/06/04 09:47AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On 1000th Drobe article published :

I'm late to the party as ever, but many congrats to the current drobe crew, whatever the article count. Generating an active site like this isn't easy, and I know they put in a lot of effort in keeping it going, and it is quite rightly a success. The tone may not suit everyone, but they're free not to read, which is generally what people do if they don't appreciate something. Unless that is those of you that post regularly here and claim not to like it have sado-masocistic tendancies or feel the need to punish yourselves for something. Anyway, congrats again, and keep up the good work! Dougal on 03/05/04 08:59AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On VirtualRPC to be laptop friendlier:

jess: WRT to KDE et al - I acknowledge it may not be the slimmest of systems, but I was just trying to give an example that there are existing technologies that can be used, rather using an emulator on top of an existing system, but this is all rather getting a little off topic Dougal on 02/01/04 7:40PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Again with the laptops:

MikeG: No GUI pleases everyone (here's to more choice!) and Mac OS X is the same. But don't go judging a book by its cover: yes the Mac OS X GUI is very simple (deliberately so), but in no way does that lock you out of the BSD layer should you choose to use it. I have a minimum of two terminals open on my main Mac OS X machine (one running irssi admittedly and hardly ever use the finder as I prefer to use zsh as my navigation tool of choice. In fact Apple have gone out their way to provide support for people wishing to use the unixness of the thing, adding extra command line tools to support macisms (such as the commands open, osascript, pbcopy/pbpaste and so on) providing app notes on how to port unix apps to work on Darwin (the name for the BSD layer) and providing support for the DarwinPorts project which makes it easy to fetch and install unix stuff. And then there's Apple's X11 support.... Look. I don't care if you like RISC OS, Mac OS X, Windows, X11, or whatever. But if you're going to critisise a platform, at least be accurate. This isn't /. you know. Dougal on 09/12/03 09:57AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Iyonix celebrates champagne first birthday:

Gavin: I guess the counter point is that there's lots of product claims with either no or very delayed follow through (RiscStation Laptop? The Omega?). I think it's quite nice for once to have a company that just does rather than waffles lots. Products tend to become delayed, and I'd rather companies announced when they were ready to ship, rather than make early claims and the suffer as products don't meet the predicted deadlines. Dougal on 01/12/03 2:50PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On RiscPC production cease rumoured:

Dgs: Very droll. But if you note I was merely reflecting on the fact that in the RiscPC accees to memory has been described as a bottleneck, thus my statement remains valid, regardless of my ignorance of the machine's earlier life. Dougal on 09/11/03 1:29PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On RiscPC production cease rumoured:

dgs: No, as I'm not an Acorn person, so I've never followed the ins and outs of the platform Dougal on 08/11/03 7:19PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On RiscPC production cease rumoured:

AMS: And note that on a RiscPC the memory access rate is considered to be a severe bottleneck... Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean you *should*. Memory access is a real bottleneck on modern machines at high clock speeds, and not using a faster bus speed on a modern processor would be just foolish. Dougal on 08/11/03 1:54PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On R-Comp offers RISC OS emulation solution:

Bob has a point surely? You guys surely are interested in the operating system up (or at least the majority of users are). Given that you can apparently emulate RISC OS at reasonable speedson ix86, why not switch over? When Apple moved over to PowerPC, one of the reasons they got away with it was that they could emulate 68k on the PowerPC at speeds comparable to running it natively. This was quite important as lots of the OS was in 68k asm, and that was run in the same emulation environment. And all this was before fun things like JITs were the norm. So, you move RISC OS to ix86, emulate what needs to be, recompile where at all possible, and move developers over to ix86 tool chains. RISC OS hardware companies can specialise in building PCs that have appropriate driver support. What's more, users could dual boot to get Windows if need be. Unlikely to happen I'd say, but not infeasible technically. Dougal on 13/10/03 4:22PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On R-Comp offers RISC OS emulation solution:

The PowerPC ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) is designed with different implementations in mind (a typical IBM trait if you look back their mainframe processor designs in the 70s). You can get increadibly simple PowerPC implementations aimed at embedded systems (e.g., the PPC405, which just has a single, 32 bit, integer execution unit, and as part of the Xilinx Virtex II Pro clocks up to 300 MHz), then you can get the IBM POWER4 high end compute-tastic jobs which consume enough power that were you to try put one of those in a mac it would melt the case (according to one IBM engineer on comp.arch). Thus, it is fair to compare the small scale, embedded minded PowerPC implementations, but obviously it makes no sense to compare the PPC970 (aka G5) with an ARM part. The key distinction is that the PowerPC ISA was designed to be scalable from the low and to the high end, just as it was designed to support both 32 bit and 64 bit implementations. In terms of processor design it's quite unusual in that it demonstrates foresight on behalf of the original design team I can't remember who designed what in AIM, but I can recommend Jim Carlton's book "Apple - The inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders", which will probably explain it. It's facinating look at how Apple got from it's founding stages to where Jobs was brought back in. It's amazing that they ever survived given how many golden eggs they just passed up. I'm told, and I can't confirm this, that PowerPC is generally the embedded processor of choice in mobile phone base stations. Dougal on 13/10/03 12:42AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On R-Comp offers RISC OS emulation solution:

/me puts on the waders and joins in... Motorola based PowerPCs are aimed at embedded systems, but the currect G5 isn't. It's a cut down of IBMs POWER4 series of high end processors designed for more modest workstations and blades. The Apple complaint, if they ever publicly slagged of the PowerPC, which I find hard to believe (produce a qualified source of Apple slagging off a major supplier and I'll happily believe you thought), would only have been referring to the G4. But the embedded nature of the G4 mean's is whizzo for PowerBooks. Apple get the benefit of 64 bit workstations and Powerbooks/iBooks with fantastic battery life. And as for companies stuck using embedded system's chips, pot, kettle, black Dougal on 13/10/03 11:32AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

jerryf: so, you think that there's no compelling reason to pay for RISC OS software when you have a PC? In which case surely the platform deserves to die as there's no point in using it anymore! The people I know run VMWare on Linux to get office, despite there being Star Office installed on their Linux boxes. This surely is a case of people preferring to work with some bit of software they like. PC emulation in an Iyonix or such would just put the price up even more. Compare the cost of a PC with VA-RPC to an Iyonix and PC hardware on a card, and I think you'll find the former is cheaper. My point is that I have no idea what the affect of emulation will be on the platform in the long run, and to be blunt, neither does anyone else here All I was trying to do was provide some alternative ideas to that which had been expressed which offered a possibly more positive situation. Dougal on 10/10/03 10:13AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

Whilst I appreciate that there is this whole "will emulators distract from hardware development" issue, I think that people have to realise that the cat is out the bag so to speak, and I doubt you'll be able to magic away emulators now. The question is then not whether they're good or bad, more whether they will eventually have a positive or negative affect on the scene. I also have to object strongly to the statement that free emulators attract freeloaders. If people steal ROM images to make such things work then then problem is on their side. I think for a lot of people who own old Acorn hardware it makes a nice way of doing RISC OS stuff on their PC/Mac. Dougal on 09/10/03 11:04PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

jerry: in the opening line you say that most people won't buy software to run under an emulator. the counter argument to that is the popularity of Virtual PC on the mac, and now I come to think of it, VMWare - I know a lot of people that use VMWare to run Windows software under linux. Dougal on 09/10/03 9:57PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

jerryf: I guess the counter argument is the number of people that buy virtual PC for the mac an use it to run PC software. Dougal on 09/10/03 9:37PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

Stuart: Damn, I just got my PhD, and was hoping I could become Dr. Evil I think Aaron has done a good job of summarising everything nicely, so not much more to add except... If ROL see emulation as a way forward for their product, then perhaps they could develop RO in a direction that allows emulation to be easier, by prodviding drivers, etc., which will work with a virtual machine environment, turning the emulator more into a bridge between the host an native environment. Kind of in for a penny, in for a pound: if ROL are going to try and generate revenue from emulation then they may as well try and work with it. Dougal on 09/10/03 9:11PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

Stuart: so are you trying to imply that us ArcEm developers are evil? Dougal on 09/10/03 4:08PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On AdvantageSix launches new VirtualRPC based PC :

guestx: "Nevertheless, some classic platforms have been successfully emulated over time, and I don't just mean arcade machines and games consoles either." But what of them have survived as a system that people will want to use for day to day work? What of them have fresh software developed for them once the emulated platform no longer has hardware produced for it? One benefit of having a good emulation platform for RISC OS is if people at work could use it where there would be no chance that they could convince their boss to get anything non-wintel based. This only really works though if the same people have an Iyonix or an Omega at home too, generating revenue for further hardware production. An whilst the Iyonix is currently the bee's knees of the RISC OS world, given guestx's definition of power users needed contemporary computing performance, I don't think the Iyonix cuts the mustard. There's no way an n hundred megahertz XScale is going to compare in perfomance to a high end PC. Dougal on 09/10/03 12:10AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On RISC OS Shared Libraries:

They're binary formats, which describe how an executable file is constructed from various subcomponents (like object files), and how symbols are referenced, and how libraries are linked in, and so on. As a user you should never really need to care. Most of the time as a programmer you don't need to care either. But, as has been the point of this discussion, not all binary formats are born equal, and some make it easier to do things that others don't. To be honest, it's been a long while since I read up on ELF, but it's nice and clean to understand (as is the Windows PE format actually), and I dare say there are fantastic technical reasons to use it over whatever RISC OS has at the moment given the advocacy in this thread, but I'm not the person to explain that (being RISC OS ignorant ). Dougal on 02/10/03 10:34AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On RISCOS Ltd. AGM:

Sorry if I missed anyone else commenting on this, but is it possible/likely/worth considering that ROL may make their 32 bit RO run on the Iyonix? Do Castle really want to spend effort on developing RO5 if ROL can provide a 32 bit RO in the near future? RO5 could then be seen as a stop gap until everyone else caught up with all that 32 bit goodness. I have no knowledge really about Castle, but are they likely to be in RO development for the long haul if they can have someone else do it? I guess the problem with that scenario is that it leaves Castle not owning the subsequent developments made by RO (similar to how they don't seem to have any rights over select). Anyway, just though I'd throw fuel on the fire Dougal on 15/09/03 10:22PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Future ARM based processors for RISC OS?:

And an R in the name Dougal on 01/08/03 1:29PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Imagining RISC OS and PMT:

Perhas people should try think of it another way: would Windows NT (and derivatives) or Mac OS X have been as stable and secure without PMT? Dougal on 31/07/03 9:41PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Future ARM based processors for RISC OS?:

Trust me, they are unrelated, both in the fact that they were designed and made independantly, and in that they program differently at the assembly level (I've written a considerable amount of code for both). Dougal on 31/07/03 6:46PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Future ARM based processors for RISC OS?:

"btw how much of the ARM3 is left in the modern PPC?" Pardon? They're totally unrelated. Dougal on 31/07/03 00:31AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Future ARM based processors for RISC OS?:

Hey Zimmerle, My actual PhD was on using reconfigurable logic to speed up applications at run time by letting them load circuits they lead. Trust me, there's a lot of issues about this (it's a hot active area of research) - FPGAs are slow to reprogram and thus fine grain sharing of the resource is quite hard. Most of the research is about combining the CPU core and reprogrammable logic on a single chip, otherwise your off chip communication costs can become excessive (I've seen reports of photoshop filters that ran slower that software on an FPGA co-processor because of the excessive communication overheads). I think it's a cool technology (having spend 4 years of my life investigating it , and I really do hope to see it used in the future, but be aware that it's not just as simple as "ah, we'll just slap an FPGA in there and it'll work" - ensuring the reconfiguration and communication overheads don't out weigh the benefits whilst sharing it between a set of applications isn't easy. It'll be interesting to see if MD with the Omega allow 3rd party applications to access the FPGA and if so how they'll do it. I mailed them a couple of years ago when they announced the project enquiring as to what they were going to be doing but I got no reply. On the other point (using a second processor) that's just a complete pain for developers. On of the reasons dual processor (DP) macs were never popular before Mac OS X was that programmers had to explicity write code to use the second processor rather than just threading their applications and letting the OS worry about it, so very few companies wrote applications to support it, and thus no one bought them, and thus DP macs were canned until the release of OS X. And note that that was two of the *same* processor! Anyway, I hate to sound negative, I'm not trying to say "you're doomed! bwahahahaha" (this isn't an Amiga forum after all ) - I was just trying to stir debate. Dougal on 29/07/03 08:49AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Future ARM based processors for RISC OS?:

My posts always end up as long rants - sorry Dougal on 29/07/03 08:49AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Comments on the Microdigital Alpha:

"I agree with those people who say that for schools, a fast Windows machine with RISC OS emulation is the best solution." Yes, I always thought that computers needed to be made more confusing for children. This way we can force them to try and get their heads around to interfaces on one machine, the fact that there's a limited degree of operability between applications on the same machine, apps with the blue title bar can use the network and those with the mottled grey can't, and so on. Dougal on 23/07/03 1:09PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Comments on the Microdigital Alpha:

What thiny you could do if VARPC had a Linux port would be make a minimal linux environment so that the user was never exposed to linux - it just auto runs VARPC, the user is none the wiser. This would be a nicer solution, but would also require a complete emulator that exposed all the facilities a user could possibly want (not only network, but things like USB for instance). This might even make the product cheaper (no microsoft tax to pay), and faster (only put into the linux system what you really need to run VARPC). Dougal on 17/07/03 6:44PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Comments on the Microdigital Alpha:

Jonix: given the lack of networking on the Alpha, you'd have no choice to switch over for certain tasks. Then it becomes a question of how closely integrated you want various tasks to be, and whether dividing your workload between XP and RISC OS provides benefits over the mental switching costs (e.g., you can't mix RISC OS and XP application windows, can you easily cut and paste between the two environments? and so on). Dougal on 17/07/03 3:51PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Comments on the Microdigital Alpha:

Ah, well not to worry Chris. It's just our opinion too I'd hate to see the Internet poluted with facts. Dougal on 17/07/03 01:48AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Comments on the Microdigital Alpha:

Sorry Chris, I'm with Spriteman here - Acorn had the schoolmarket for ages, and it did them no good. And, let's face it, Mac's in education didn't do Apple that much good either. I think there's very little correlation between what people use at school and what they use in work - the vast majority of people who make that transition have absolutely no influence on the company's purchasing decisions. The only people you get by such a policy is those that go and start their own company, and I'm sure that has to by quite a small market. To those that say the Alpha doesn't bring money into RISC OS hardware development - well, MD do make RISC OS hardware don't they? Surely they must be making some money off this, otherwise why do it? I know it's not exactly what you'd like to see, but given the RS laptop tale, it covers a market segment where there was previously no RISC OS solution at very little development cost to MD (one assumes), and they make money off it. I'm utterly convinced it's not going to woo over new users though, and that's probably the real problem with the Alpha. Why would a new user take time to learn RISC OS? They can run Office, Internet Explorer, e-mail, games, etc. all under XP - what's the advantage of running in Virtual Acorn? A nicer GUI perhaps, but given that they have the apps they want under Windows already, why fire up that emulator and add an extra level of hassle to getting to doing what they want to be doing? Dougal on 17/07/03 01:30AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Price Comparisons:

I hate pages that automatically turn smilies into images as it leads to problems when you try and close text in parenthesis with a smilie. Grrrr etc. Dougal on 29/05/03 7:59PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Price Comparisons:

If you just want to try it out you can get VA for thirty quid. I'd imagine that anyone without a home computer that's not already an Acorn fan isn't going to buy an Acorn of any type as a first computer these days. They'll most likely get a PC. If they already have a PC thought you can try get them hooked on VA (it's cheaper and takes up less desk space). The cheap RPC deal I imagine is only of tempation to those people (like my good self I guess that have a pre-SA machine and want to upgrade. Dougal on 29/05/03 7:57PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Microdigital parades Alpha online:

The top two virtues of being british: disapointment and disillusionment. Why else do we invent things (sports, industries, etc.)? So the rest of teh world can be better than us! Dougal on 16/05/03 7:53PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Microdigital parades Alpha online:

Such as how to be the underdog? Dougal on 16/05/03 7:34PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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