[M3devel] what processors anyone cares about?

[Randy Coleburn]

Jay:
 
Not sure exactly what you are doing and how my answer will impact what
you are doing, but here is my 2 cents.  If there is stuff out there to
deal with these old computers, we shouldn't remove it just because they
are old.  
 
I still have Modula-3 code that is running on old computers.  Indeed,
the government tends to have some interesting requirements to keep alive
certain systems that use old technology.  I have delivered many systems
over the course of my career whose actual lifetime was much longer than
what anyone projected in the beginning.  If we remove support for the
old stuff, then we shoot ourselves in the foot for any type of support
on these old systems.  
 
Indeed, I've recently been approached about making some changes to a
system that I first developed back in the late 1990's.  It is still
around and working.  One of the system components has been upgraded and
they want me to make software changes to let the Modula-3 code work with
the new component.  This software controls and monitors satellite radio
communications systems.  
 
Regards,
Randy

>>> Jay <jayk123 at hotmail.com> 2/11/2008 4:35 AM >>>
ps: I will point out that NT 3.1 doesn't have have good compatibility
with things like VMware or Virtual PC (or vice versa), not sure it will
even run on modern hardware (the problem is probably these virtual
machines exposing too much?)
 
also what processors do people care about?
 386? 
 486? 
 Pentium I? 
 (Pentium's with the FDIV bug? I still see remnants of the workaround
for that..)
 
The newer processors have some nice seeming instructions. Like read
timestamp counter, interlocked compare exchange 64, interlocked
increment/decrement (on circa 386, those Win32 functions don't return
the new value, only <0, 0, or >0), conditional mov, etc. And there is
MMX, XMM (SSE?), SSE2/3/4..the instruction set advances don't seem to
ever stop.. Nice thing about AMD64 is it establishes a new baseline.
 
I can't claim to have done any profiling with or without these
instructions used.. nor that the integrated backend will ever advance in
these areas..
 
 - Jay
From: jayk123 at hotmail.com 
To: m3devel at elegosoft.com 
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:15:50 +0000
Subject: [M3devel] FW: [M3commit] CVS Update: cm3

Aren't we better off with more VAR parameters and fewer UNTRACED REFs?
That way more interfaces/modules can be "safe", as this one changed?
 
(Does anyone care about NT 3.1 or, gasp, Win32s compat? :) )
(Maybe a "DJGPP" target will satisfy? :) )
 
 - Jay



> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:13:41 +0000
> To: m3commit at elegosoft.com 
> From: jkrell at elego.de 
> Subject: [M3commit] CVS Update: cm3
> 
> CVSROOT: /usr/cvs
> Changes by: jkrell at birch. 08/02/11 10:13:41
> 
> Modified files:
> cm3/m3-libs/m3core/src/time/WIN32/: Time.m3 
> cm3/m3-libs/m3core/src/win32/: WinBase.i3 
> 
> Log message:
> at the expense of NT 3.1 compatibility use GetSystemTimeAsFileTime
> instead of GetSystemTime + SystemTimeToFileTime
> 


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