From: danaf@bray1b.its.rpi.edu (Frank R. Dana Jr.)
Subject: Re: Advocate please...
Reply-To: danaf@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 04:21:28 GMT

In article <sheldon.728149778@pv141b.vincent.iastate.edu>, sheldon@iastate.edu (Steve Sheldon) writes:
|> In <3hq3rck@rpi.edu> danaf@bray1b.its.rpi.edu (Frank R. Dana Jr.) writes:
|> 
|> >In article <1993Jan27.042105.714747@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, bayko@mercury.cs.uregina.ca (John  Bayko) writes:
|> 
|> >	- Try to do toooo much at once! This is also true on UNIX systems,
|> 
|>  No it is not.  The Unix system will bog down incredibly, but it will not
|> crash.  At least I've never had it happen on my machine.  DS 5000/200 with
|> 24 Megs of RAM, 200 Megs of swap.  I can get this thing thrashing to swap
|> bad enough that the system is using 50% of the CPU, and it won't crash.
|> It doesn't move very fast, tho, and I generally avoid it.  But I run some
|> pretty big stuff, and tend to overload it a lot.  This happens when your
|> application uses 25 Megs of RAM, and you've only got 12 free, and you try to
|> run multiple sessions of this at the same time.

Well, we run a UNIX network here at RPI with considerably more processes run-
ning than that! The system will not *CRASH* in the Guru sense, but I know for
a fact that if 10 people try to start Maple at the same time on the same server,
some of the processes can be lost...

(Of course, due to the excellent lack of service here, the machines also crash
about 10000x more than my Amiga...)

|>  I've only crashed this machine twice in 9 months, and both of those were
|> caused by problems with the network, not by overloading the CPU/harddisk.

That's what I meant - network overloading. True, not the same thing, but the
same problem. Too many things try to happen at once, and eventually two 
processes butt heads over some resource. If they get inside each others' window
of protection, nasty things can happen...

|>  In my experience, the only machine I've ever seen do this is the Amiga.
|> Although OS/2 is somewhat sensitive to overloading itself, it's design is
|> much better equipped to deal with this than that of AmigaDOS.  Not to
|> diminish AmigaDOS, it's just kind of stuck on old technology, and has to
|> continue to work with 68000's.

Too true. The fact that you can buy a 68000 machine in 1993 sickens me.

|>  But, yes, you're correct in that it's not a great fault.  Usually one
|> doesn't do something like this.  But it still is kind of annoying to have to
|> sit there and remember, "Ok, wait... If I try to do this too fast the
|> machine will go south."

Yeah, but eventually it becomes second-nature. The only real problem I have 
is remembering not to run ProPage while another process is starting up - its 
memory check happens wayyy at the beginning of the startup, so sometimes it 
will see 600K of CHIP free, another process will start up and take 400K, and
then ProPage will happily try to shove itself into 200K of CHIP - fireworks 
time!

|> -- 
|> sheldon@iastate.edu                Steve Sheldon
|> Project Vincent                    ICSS Resource Unit
|> SCO ODT, Arc/Info, Atlas GIS       2142 Agronomy Hall
|>                                    Iowa State University

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=======Amiuser============Frank R. Dana, Jr.============Doc Ami=======     
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