On Apr 26, 2012, at 12:38 PM, Dan wrote: > On Apr 22, 2012, at 3:39 PM, geraldcornish wrote: >> Current setup is Pismo 500MHz/1GB Ram/100GB HDD Tiger 10.4.11 & OS 9.2.2 >> Intention is to upgrade to Dual G4/G5 but keeping Tiger/Classic. >> >> My better half needs to use Pagemaker in classic while using OSX >> simultaneously. Pagemaker uses up all the spare cpu cycles and slows down >> all other programs, and I assume this would still be the case with a faster >> Mac. > > Depends on how PageMaker is written. If it's polling for user input > continuously, then it will certainly always (try to) use some cpu time, not a > lot %-wise if you have lots to spare.
That's OS 9 (and below) for you. > > Seems odd to me that PageMaker would be continuously piggy. Have you watched > the system with Activity Monitor, to see what resources are actually in such > low demand that the whole system runs slowly? > >> > if we move to a dual G4/G5 how does Tiger handle the two cpus? > > OS X (and OS 9) supports multiple processors (discrete, multi core, threads) > two ways. First: when a process or thread is ready for cpu time, it is > dispatched to one of the CPU/cores. Second: if the application knows how to > use non-sequential threads, then the threads are dispatched the same way - to > whichever CPU/core has time available. OS 9 supports letting programs use multiple processors but it's up to the program to handle multiple threads. > >> Will it assign classic/pagemaker to one cpu only, leaving the other cpu to >> do any OSX work needed? > > No. Under OS X, scheduling is done preemptively, as resources are available. > That means a process is given a quantum time slice on a CPU/core, and the > CPU is taken away when the slice ends or when the process becomes otherwise > blocked (waiting for i/o, etc). Classic is a process under OS X... so when > its slice ends, the app running within Classic is suspended. When the next > slice is available to that process, it is re-assigned to a CPU/core... Of > course, if the process is still "loaded" in one particular CPU/core, then > assignment preference is given to using that particular CPU/core. But Pagemaker will be using only one CPU at a time (I'm guessing that OS X doesn't support OS 9's version of multiprocessor support. > >> This would be ideal for us if one cpu is kept free of the Pagemaker loading. > > You need to think of the OS being the high muckety, not the CPU. The CPU, > like memory, is *just* a resource that the OS controls / manages. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
