To: stik@ON-Luebeck.DE
Subject: Re: STIK: STiK 2.x concerns                                                     


On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 18:29:18 Martin Mitchell <mem@mode wrote: 
>
>After being notified about when the last STiK 2.x release was, I finally
>found a copy. Buried in a mail 'flood' here unfortunately.

I'm glad you found it.  Your previous remark made me worried that something
had gone wrong with the mail shot.


----- snip ----- re: Martins STiK 2 boot speed test
>
>As you can see, the module loading was hopeless on the ST. I would expect
>a time of 15-20 seconds to be acceptable for the ST.

Yes, that sounds reasonable, and properly used even TOS 1.0 will allow this.
'Properly used' here means that you should install the bugfix patch PINHEAD.


>However, due to the hopelessly inefficient module loading system, STiK 2.x
>fails to meet its requirements abysmally.

No, it is your ST system which is handicapped by missing bugfix patches.
Such are needed for various purposes on all TOS machines, since all have bugs.
eg: I must have FPATCH2 and HSMODEM installed on my Falcon to cure bugs.


>Requirements I hear you say? Well, I require STiK to give adequate
>performance on ordinary STs, not just on TTs and Falcons. I hope most of
>you would agree with me on this requirement.

Sure, but 'ordinary' is not the same as handicapped.


>This is not a trivial issue, remember that STiK is only one of many
>programs which the ST must initialise upon starting. A simple ST should
>boot quickly, not take over 1 minute!

Agreed, and so will yours do too with PINHEAD installed.

>I would like to see an immediate improvement in this area, before it is
>marginalised to future optimizations.

This is a non-issue.

You are using a bugged machine without any bugfixes to 'prove' what you want.
I could just as well throw out FPATCH2 and HSMODEM, and then 'prove' that
Connect doesn't work at high speeds on a Falcon (which it wouldn't).

Anyone who accepts using a TOS with bugs (all TOS have some), thus also accepts
having to use the various bugfix patches needed.  TOS 1.0 needs several, and
one of those is PINHEAD, by Charles F. Johnson.  This eliminates the 'slowload'
problem and should be used by all users of old TOS who care about speed.

I recommend that you search for an archive named PINHED??.???, since the last
version I used was 1.8 with a filename of PINHED18.ARC, though it will probably
be LZH or ZIP today.  Actually I would have expected you to use it already.


NB: I'm not saying this merely to defend the 'Pexec' method,  because
    to me that isn't of any supreme importance, though I quite like it.
    But no method should be discarded based on a test with a machine
    handicapped in this way.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regards:  Ronald Andersson                     mailto:dlanor@oden.se
                                               http://www.oden.se/~dlanor
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