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- Newsgroups: alt.bbs
- Path: sparky!uunet!emba-news.uvm.edu!moose.uvm.edu!cblaise
- From: cblaise@moose.uvm.edu.UUCP (Chris Blaise)
- Subject: Re: TBBS versus RA/Netware
- Message-ID: <1992Nov23.043757.8041@uvm.edu>
- Originator: cblaise@moose.uvm.edu
- Sender: news@uvm.edu
- Organization: University of Vermont -- Division of EMBA Computer Facility
- References: <1992Nov22.125529.414@global.hacktic.nl>
- Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 04:37:57 GMT
- Lines: 39
-
- From article <1992Nov22.125529.414@global.hacktic.nl>, by peter@global.hacktic.nl (Peter Busser):
- > (Insisting that it should run under DOS is silly since you can't use it from
- > within TBBS anyway. If you insist on comparing TBBS with other DOS systems,
- > then I insist that you pull out the smart serial board(s) and run TBBS on
- > normal 8250/16450 serial chips! Read on...)
- >
- > Well, the real reason isn't that systems like RA, QBBS, PCBoard, Wildcat,
- > Maximus, Opus, Magpie, Telegard, SBBS, and all the others are more ineficient
- > than TBBS. Okay, they take more memory but the difference in price can easily
- > compensate that. The real reason is that TBBS supports smart multi-port boards
- > and the others don't. These boards do the real work. TBBS just supervises these
- > boards and only needs to send a block of bytes to such a board once in a
- > while. On a system with 16 lines, all actively downloading at high speed, you
- > should see only a few percent CPU usage. If TBBS had to do all the character
- > I/O to and from the serial ports, then there wouldn't be such a difference in
- > performance between TBBS and any other DOS BBS program. Not even though DV
- > has probably more overhead than TBBS.
- >
- > This means in short that it isn't TBBS that is responsible for the speed, it's
- > the hardware. Fortunately, supporting smart hardware isn't a unique TBBS
- > feature. An OS/2 or UNIX system which had drivers that could use the same
- > boards as TBBS would be as fast if not faster (probably better file system and
- > *less* (that's no typo) OS overhead) than DOS+TBBS. The same kind of boards
- > exist for UNIX. They might exist for OS/2 too. Any BBS system that can support
- > a UNIX tty device or an OS/2 COMxx: device can use these boards and get the
- > same or better speed as TBBS.
-
- Nice theory, but as you present it (and as I understand it), it's
- wrong. TBBS does not support "intellegent" cards, ie. DigiBoards with
- onboard processors/memory.
-
- > THERE IS NO ADVANTAGE IN RUNNING TBBS. There *WAS* maybe a reason, but there is
- > none anymore.
-
- Care to explain?
-
- TTYL
- Chris
-
-