Re: SixPacks mods for GCIC users

--- In [email protected], Dave McGuire <Mcguire@...> wrote:
>
> On 11/4/10 10:54 AM, Gregg Levine wrote:
> >> Often I find fun in installing and testing Hercules on small
> >> appliances, tiny computers, NAS and so on.
> >>
> >> Recently I bought a D-LINK DNS-323 for a bargain price (about
> >> 75 Euros without HD) and I installed Hercules on it.
> >>
> >> Based on a 500 Mhz ARM processor it has a perfomance of 1-1.5 MIPS (more or less the same as a 4341-2 of 1980); this is acceptable to me as I like to have some wait time after issuing a command (it remembers me of good old times;-).
> >>
> >> So I decided to test GCIC in this environment, and I
> >> was surprised by the time required to start BROWSE or
> >> EDIT function; for example starting BROWSE of GEDIT ASSEMBLE
> >> file (3742 lines) required about 65 seconds; the same for
> >> starting EDIT.
> >>
> >> Even exiting from BROWSE OR EDIT required about 12 sec.
> >>
> >> The same functions in a VM/SP environment(using BROWSE and XEDIT)
> >> give a 0.1-0.4 seconds response time.
> >>
> >> I noticed that starting BROWSE in GCIC has a path lentgh of about
> >> 60M instructions, while the BROWSE of VM/SP has a 100k instructions
> >> path length.
> >>
> >> Surprised by such a behaviour I looked into the code of GCIC,
> >> and discoveved that the file to be BROWSED or EDITED
> >> is read into memory by the same routine in GTABLE ASSEMBLE module;
> >> for each line read is issued a GETMAIN to get an area of
> >> 8 + LRECL length.
> >>
> >> I suspected that the  poor performances were related to all
> >> these GETMAINs, so I tried a quick and dirty correction:
> >> I acquired an unique area of 500k at the beginning of the routine
> >> and modified the code to cope with this unique area.
> >>
> >> I got a response time of 3 sec (instead of 65) and exiting
> >> from BROWSE or EDIT is almost immediate.
> >>
> >> Hoping this may be useful to the developer to improve an already
> >> fantastic program!
> >
> > Yes this is useful. Very useful in fact. It means we have moved
> > forward in what we can use Hercules on. Now I'm not a fan of D-Link,
> > but in this case the fact that you've got it running on that family of
> > NAS devices suggests that anyone can do that.
> 
>    Howdy Gregg.  Hercules runs on pretty much any platform that supports 
> Linux or another UNIX-flavor OS.  This means it can run on pretty much 
> anything that has an MMU and supports enough RAM and mass storage.  This 
> has been the case for a long time.  It's neat stuff.
> 
>    That said, though, I'm pretty sure Paul was actually talking about 
> his GCIC buffer management optimization, whether THAT would be useful or 
> not.
>

Dave,

I'm pretty sure you're right:-)
I reported running Hercules and VM/370 on D-LINK NAS just to explain why I had so low MIPS performance - which anywhow made more evident the problem in GCIC.
On my PC with 40-50 MIPS the problem is less evident; but If I had a 4341-2 GCIC would be unusable.

Regards

Paul
 
>              -Dave
> 
> -- 
> Dave McGuire
> Port Charlotte, FL
>