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  #16  
Old January 22nd 17, 05:49 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
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On Sun, 22 Jan 2017 14:22:12 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.




Looking at the embedded sentence " I think I know where it's at," it
reminds me of the story of the man standing on the subway platform,
asking the man next to him "where's the train at?"

The reply came. "What's the matter with you? Didn't you ever go to
school? Don't you know better than to end a sentence with a
preposition?"

"OK. Where's the train at, asshole?"
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  #17  
Old January 22nd 17, 06:00 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
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On Sun, 22 Jan 2017 09:43:43 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jan 2017 10:00:47 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


Really? That is disappointing. I've just looked at the above page, and -
though, puzzlingly, in pale grey under the button for "download XP
version" - they say it works on Windows 10, 8, and 7; if it's only
32-bit, they are being decidedly disingenuous. (I suspect W10-32 is a
rare beast.)



And getting rare



Sorry, typo. That should be "rarer."


all the time. 32-bit computer are fast disappearing,
and it won't be long before everything is 64-bit (or perhaps even
128-bit).

  #18  
Old January 22nd 17, 06:07 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
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"Ken Blake" wrote


And getting rare all the time. 32-bit computer are fast disappearing,
and it won't be long before everything is 64-bit (or perhaps even
128-bit).


Not exactly fast. Some people are still using
16-bit software, which was mostly replaced almost
20 years ago. And the only thing I'm aware of
presently that excludes 32-bit is Adobe's Creative
Suite. (Which is rental software, anyway. Good
riddance to them.)

32-bit allows for numbers up to about 4 billion.
It became outmoded due to things like large video
files, large hard disks, and RAM capacities. The
only major shortcoming of 32-bit currently is
limited RAM. It will be mostly phased out over the
next few years, but we're really just approaching
the tipping point now -- where 64-bit is likely to
be less hassle for most people than 32-bit. That's
because most 32-bit software runs on 64-bit while
some software is still not available in 64-bit. (When
Win7 came out, IE-32 was the default because
plugins were not available in 64-bit.)

64-bit allows for numbers up to about 18
pentillion. Do you really think we're going to
outgrow that anytime soon? I'd say you're pretty
safe buying a new computer or CPU that's "merely"
capable of 64-bit.


  #19  
Old January 23rd 17, 12:39 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
jbm[_2_]
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On 22/01/2017 10:00, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. I think I have looked at it (or similar) at
times; I tended to dismiss them as just a gimmick on what is basically a
flatbed scanner. I hadn't realised they did higher resolution for the
negatives. (Though, unless - which seems unlikely - the scanning head
has extra sensors in just a middle stripe, _presumably_ the higher
resolution, theoretically, should be accessible for full-width material
too, though rarely _required_ for that.)



I never tried to scan at the high resolutions over the whole platten.
But from what I remember, when in negative/transparency mode, with
ScanGear running and the film holder in place, the scanner becomes
"intelligent", and is able to detect exactly where each
negative/transparency is located on the platten (there's a special
identifier slot at the top of each of the holders), and only scans in
those locations. Using ScanGear, you ended up with a number of
individual images depending on how many pictures were there. If you
placed a whole page on the platten to be scanned, I guess the machine
would realise it wasn't a film (there's be no slot in the right place),
and disable the ultra-high resolution. If it didn't, you would probably
end up with a file size (12Gb, I think, for an A4 image in BMP format)
that would sort of spill out over the edges of the available RAM in the
computer!!!

It was rather clever how it worked. When I originally made up the 126
film holder, it wouldn't work. But cutting a slot in the same position
and the same size as the 35mm negative holder cured that, though it
couldn't identify individual frames. It scanned the whole strip as one
image, which I used PSP9 to separate into the individual pictures. Very
fast, very easy, and very good results despite the tiny size of the
negatives. That scanner, together with a Canon iP6700D photo printer
(still in daily use through Win7) were probably the best bits of kit I
ever bought for a computer.

jim



  #20  
Old January 23rd 17, 10:12 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)
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Posts: 5,291
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In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
the tipping point now -- where 64-bit is likely to
be less hassle for most people than 32-bit. That's
because most 32-bit software runs on 64-bit while
some software is still not available in 64-bit. (When
Win7 came out, IE-32 was the default because
plugins were not available in 64-bit.)

[]
What I fail to understand is why we've accepted the principle that
64-bit machines can't run 16-bit (or 8-bit, for that matter!) software.
[I'm not saying I don't understand why it doesn't: that's because of the
way things have been decided.]

The only "excuse" I can see for the decision is that, arguably, 3/4 of
the hardware in a 64-bit system would be idle when running 16-bit
software. But who cares: it's almost certainly considerably more than 4
times as fast as the hardware the 16-bit software was written for, so it
ought to actually run at least as fast as it always did. (Plus, of
course, modern OSs could find plenty of "background tasks" to "occupy"
the idle hardware.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark
to read." - Groucho Marx
  #21  
Old January 23rd 17, 11:39 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)
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Posts: 5,291
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In message , Wolf K
writes:
On 2017-01-23 16:12, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
the tipping point now -- where 64-bit is likely to
be less hassle for most people than 32-bit. That's
because most 32-bit software runs on 64-bit while
some software is still not available in 64-bit. (When
Win7 came out, IE-32 was the default because
plugins were not available in 64-bit.)

[]
What I fail to understand is why we've accepted the principle that
64-bit machines can't run 16-bit (or 8-bit, for that matter!) software.
[I'm not saying I don't understand why it doesn't: that's because of the
way things have been decided.]

The only "excuse" I can see for the decision is that, arguably, 3/4 of
the hardware in a 64-bit system would be idle when running 16-bit
software. But who cares: it's almost certainly considerably more than 4
times as fast as the hardware the 16-bit software was written for, so it
ought to actually run at least as fast as it always did. (Plus, of
course, modern OSs could find plenty of "background tasks" to "occupy"
the idle hardware.)


Actually, 8, 16, 32 bit software runs slower than on lower-bitness
systems. A few years ago, when I still subscribed to computer
magazines, one of them did a test and found that lower-bitness programs
ran 5 to 10% slower than on 32- or 16-bit systems. Here's how I


For the same clock rate, maybe.

understand why that's so:

The bitness refers to the data path width. Instructions are generally
small, usually only 8 or 16 bits wide. An 8 bit program written for an
8 bit system uses one fetch for the instruction, and one for the data.
A 64-bit program uses one fetch for both instruction and data. So an 8
bit program on a 64 bit machine uses more clock cycles than a 64 bit
program.

Have a good day,

But the increase in overall speed ... even if the 64-bit machine is
doing two fetches per 8-bit instruction, it can probably do it in a lot
less time than the machine the software was originally written for.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

After all is said and done, usually more is said.
  #22  
Old January 24th 17, 02:17 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
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"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| What I fail to understand is why we've accepted the principle that
| 64-bit machines can't run 16-bit (or 8-bit, for that matter!) software.

Running 32-bit on Win64 requires what they call a
shim. Likewise with running 16-bit on Win32. The
processes have to be run through a translator. What
happens with software is mostly calls to system API
functions. The OS is the platform that provides the
functionality. With a 64-bit system the API functions
will be 64-bit. The standard for data or pointers being
passed around will be 64-bit. In other words, the
default numeric value used to communicate will be
8 bytes rather than 4.

Example:
RegQueryValueEx. A common system function used to
get the data of a Registry value. There are lots of ways
to get Registry values, but it's likely that all of them are
using RegQueryValueEx at some point. The first parameter
in that function is a handle to the key, which has been
opened previously. The second parameter is a pointer
to a string value that holds the name of the value to be
returned. It's an address in memory where the name has
been stored as a string of character values.
The function has 6 parameters. Advapi32.dll assumes
the data sent in the function call is the right parameters.
But in 32-bit that data only takes up 24 bytes (6x4), while
in 64-bit it takes up 48 bytes (6x8).
If 32-bit software calls 64-bit advapi32.dll to use that
function it passes the handle as a 32-bit numeric value
and the string pointer as a 32-bit value. Without the
shim to handle the call, it would be passing both of those
values as the first parameter, the 64-bit handle.
There are 6 values in all. 32-bit software will pass 6 32-bit
values. 64-bit software will pass 6 64-bit values. If the
32-bit software is not caught and handled it will pass
corrupt data for the first 3 values and the second 3 will
end up being addresses in unallocated memory. The program
will crash, if for no reason than that it's trying to "illegally"
access unallocated memory. But it will also crash because
the parameters will be nonsense.

| The only "excuse" I can see for the decision is that, arguably, 3/4 of
| the hardware in a 64-bit system would be idle when running 16-bit
| software.

Not really. It depends on what it's doing. In general,
the higher the bit-level, the more waste. In the example
above, the 64-bit function call requires twice as much
memory, but the parameters may not actually need
so much memory. It's likely that all the parameters
can be fit into 32-bit (4-byte) numeric values, which
would mean that all those extra bytes are not used.
But I suspect a 64-bit CPU works fastest with 64-bit
values, which would mean that the 32-bit call, while
more efficient, might actually be slightly slower. (Of
course, at 3-4 billion operations per second that's not
a big deal. And the savings in RAM might arguably
make up for that, depending on the situation.)




  #23  
Old January 25th 17, 06:47 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Gene Wirchenko[_2_]
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Posts: 496
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On Mon, 23 Jan 2017 20:17:59 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| What I fail to understand is why we've accepted the principle that
| 64-bit machines can't run 16-bit (or 8-bit, for that matter!) software.

Running 32-bit on Win64 requires what they call a
shim. Likewise with running 16-bit on Win32. The


And there was a shim for running 16-bit on 32-bit. It would have
been nice if that shim had been continued in 64-bit. I have some
16-bit software that I would prefer to be able to run directly.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko
 




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