Topic: New developer tool. Implications for future Podium versions.

Can you be more specific when you say that 1.98 did not work for you?

It crashed right away after hitting the power button which start/stops the engine. tested on 2 win98 comps with the same result. Had not done anything else before apart from showing it my vst folder again and choosing the hw in and outputs again.
Just tried it again with the same result. The error message reports an: invalid page in module kernel32.dll at 0187:bff9db61.
EAX=c00308b0 CS=0187 EIP=bff9db61 EFLGS=00010216
EBX=00000000 SS=018f ESP=0090feac EBP=00910148
ECX=00000000 DS=018f ESI=00b30f70 FS=0e47
EDX=7803b630 ES=018f EDI=006b5648 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
53 8b 15 e4 9c fc bf 56 89 4d e4 57 89 4d dc 89

when I do exactly the same after installing 1.97 everything works as usual.

Btw. are you the one that voted for Win98 in this topic?

Yeah, so maybe I’m even the only lonely last w98 chick in that shop.

I understand that it makes no sense providing further w98 support if it would mean double coding after swiching the development package.
I often stated, that you have to use your resources wisely and have to have priorities. I’m not going back on my word, if I turn out to be the victim of such principles.
But I hope it makes sense to do the few fixes before switching the development package, to have a completely solid clean code base for the switch. So in case things start going too funky, you don’t have too many potential causes for bugs that might occur after switching.

@Technophobia wrote:

@ Pigini
I would agree with you on the point of making sure the stability of Podium is rock solid on Win98 before it is left behind. No extra development to be carried out, just “bug fixes” would be my vote.

Yes that seems like a nice idea.

As it goes, our family box is W98, not even SE. Must confess, I haven’t run Podium on it, but am glad to hear that at least the current release will work on it… We still use it because it works, and because we don’t need anything more than what it offers for what is done on it (to answer the ‘time to move on’ crowd). If your sofa is comfortable, and still supports your weight, would you rush out to get another one when sofa 1.2 is advertised? Irritatingly, the hotmail account we access via DAV (outlook express/ thunderbird/ etc) is being withdrawn in June, and I’m not convinced the ‘Live’ interface being touted supports W98: time for a new free account [any suggestions?]

At the last place I worked, to be able to successfully run VS6 and VS.Net 2002 (their weapons of choice) on Vista boxes, we resorted to VMs running W2K and XP, and either opened a console, or remoted to them. Bit of a palava, but worked well 🙂

I know you’ve already parted with the cash, Frits, but was something like Ming/GCC considered at all? It’s sterling software and very comparable to the performance MS would boast… You then get a better choice of IDEs. Borland still turn in good C/C++ compilers these days as well, were they looked at? W98 support could potentially have been maintained with those, but I guess it’s not a problem. :shrug:

DSP

@duncanparsons wrote:

As it goes, our family box is W98, not even SE. … We still use it because it works, and because we don’t need anything more than what it offers for what is done on it (to answer the ‘time to move on’ crowd). If your sofa is comfortable, and still supports your weight, would you rush out to get another one when sofa 1.2 is advertised?

My problem with this argument is a couch does far far less than a computer does. Do you only do one thing with your computer, which is to say, apply your body weight to it? 🙂 But seriously, not even SE??? I guess you never buy newer hardware then? The problem with that far back is the support for hardware is atrocious (compared to today’s standards). XP has improved a lot of things. Perhaps you don’t need it, and I agree that people shouldn’t be forced forward all the time, but sometimes if people aren’t then there’s stagnation, too. I think Windows should be considerably cheaper, you know, with better transferring between systems and better compatibility, so that upgrading and “moving on” wouldn’t be an issue for anyone (unlike now, where it is). However, XP has provided many enhancements and is stable. For most people, anyway. I used to be stuck on, can you believe it, Windows Millennium. Because I installed it, tweaked it, and it ran fine, flawlessly, for ages, and was really fast. I was in a minority I think; everyone had so many problems, and after I reinstalled it.. It wasn’t long after I finally migrated to XP, AFTER service pack 2 was out… And what a breath of fresh air! I realised I didn’t want to move on because I had grown comfortable where I was, but I hadn’t realised the advancements that had taken place. Part of it was also, XP sucked when it first came out in my opinion. I tried it and didn’t like it. I won’t be moving to Vista ever either, since I think the next version will come out and I’m praying it will be better.

This is probably not quite the same for you anyway, but just thought I’d share.

Interestingly though, people love to upgrade all pieces of software (i.e. Podium) but not their operating systems! While not quite the same, this does seem almost hypocritical. I say almost because operating system changes require other changes often too. However, sometimes getting better stuff in the software you want to use requires the new operating system.

I can never understand either strong crowd; why would you want to stubbornly stick to the one operating system forever (in the end it’s a piece of software too, with flaws, compatibility problems, etc.). But also, why would some people want to remove all compatibility instantly after moving on and leave everyone else out in the cold?

I think XP has been out for long enough, espcially since many people these days are using it, for Podium to accept it. However, Vista has been out for a year. Anyone suggesting to move on to that, and drop all support for previous operating systems, would get a black eye. 😛 What’s with this DirectX 10 only for Vista crap? Why? I’m not entirely sure Vista has a lot more hardware support and cool under the hood things than XP, honestly. It was MEANT to, but I’m not convinced.

But over 98, XP does.

[edit]

Good gosh! Sorry for the rant! Actually I’m not totally against your opinion duncan, I just sort of lost myself in word there, sorry about that!

Also, free email providers? Tried GMail? I can’t see why that wouldn’t work on 98 (I don’t know for a fact of course). Pretty simple website, allows POP3 access, etc. I use Thunderbird with it. Outlook Express can too. Far less restrictive than Microsoft’s attempt at email which I used to use all the time until MS took it over. In fact, I’ve stopped even using my Hotmail address on MSN; I signed up for a passport account and use my GMail address now. Hotmail just gets too much spam (which admittedly is automatically junked quite well) and is just too complicated with all its stupid integrations into everything.

In short; I recommend GMail. In general it seems to work just fine!

[second edit]

Pigini states below some things, and yes, my comments are for most people. I doubt what Pigini does represents even a majority of musicians. His case is almost special, in my belief…

Hi Pigini:

Although I went XP several years ago, I have noticed since the beginning that MIDI timing is just not a strong point of this OS. It seems to depend on the DAW software that I use, but for instance, Reaper was unuseable on my Craptop with XP. Even optimizing didn’t help. Podium works well, but I’m not using such a demanding setup as you. Reaper works well on my good notebook, but again, I’m not doing any demanding MIDI work anymore.
But what I wonder is if there are ways to beat XP into submission with optimizations for MIDI and audio? I’m lousy at customizing – I just follow guides and hope for the best 😆
I know it’s a pain, but if you have a spare machine, it might be work hacking away for a while and trying to get some solid timing on XP. There must be a way. There is so much that one can turn off in this OS. And of course there are the hardware profiles, too. It sounds like you really know your computer stuff, so I”m wondering if you have already tried? and if you have any tips, too 🙂

Heh… yeah, MIDI on the newer OS’s (crapintosh included) makes me long for my old Atari 1040 ST 😆 now THAT was machine!

It is still compiled with VS6, so Windows compatibility is unchanged.

Thanx a million, I’m more than a little relieved to read that!!

@spoonboiler
When using XP for audio/midi stuff, it’s best having a dedicated partition to start from a boot manager where network support and all but the bare essential services are disabled, no unnecessary background tasks running etc.. That’s better than untweaked, but still not as good as w98 midiwise, it’s probably because of w98 drivers accessing the hardware more directly. In general it’s best to use hardware with inbuilt syncing capabilities (vitc,ltc,mtc) plus the software to make use of it. Of course, audio needs to be clock-synced too.
Audio/midi hardware connected to pci-bus or pcmcia, expresscard-slot or firewire on laptops syncs better than usb devices.
If usb hardware is to be used, midi and audio should be integrated in the same device (no additional usb midi interface fighting for cpu cycles and bandwidth), no other devices on the usb bus at all (no mouse or keyboard either).
You mentioned the Atari. Midiwise it still rules. That goes for the timing aswell as for the difference in creative approaches the various midi soft on Atari offers. With Notator or Logic+Unitor you get multiple reliable midi ports and syncing capabilities cheap today. The solid timing is mostly due to the OS, which in comparison to todays PC’s happens completely on the Bios-Level. A good example that raw CPU-Power is not everything.