# Awesome performance from TiVo



## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Is your W7 doodah multimedia toy running slow? Can't get Myth to run on less than a 1.2GHz processor with 1GB memory?

Just compare your PC spec against the TiVo's:


```
------- System Info --------
 Processor speed = 50 MHz
 Bus speed       = 25 MHz
 Amount of DRAM  = 16 MBytes
```
Yes you read that correctly 50* M*Hz and 16 *M*B ram.

That's *0.05 GHz* and *0.016 GB* ram.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Yep, the beauty of having an MPEG encoder & decoder done in hardware means
the CPU isn't involved in video at all - all it is doing is putting up some menus and scheduling.


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## tonywalk (Sep 10, 2002)

spitfires said:


> .....and *0.016 GB* ram.


<pedant>

Thats actually 16/1024 not 16/1000

</pedant


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

Oi pack it in! 

p.s. Actually it's (16 *1.024) / 1024 which err equals 0.016


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

spitfires said:


> Is your W7 doodah multimedia toy running slow? Can't get Myth to run on less than a 1.2GHz processor with 1GB memory?
> 
> Just compare your PC spec against the TiVo's:
> 
> ...


Yeah, but there's two extra places on the motherboard to solder on another whopping 16MB of RAM!

They think of everything!

(except making that hunk o' junk internal modem a quickly changed out module)


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

16MB? Luxury. My first PC had 640K. You had to program things properly in those days.


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

^ aye them were the days.


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## irrelevant (Mar 19, 2002)

The first computer I was writing programs on had only 1K of RAM ... Now those you had to be careful with memory usage on..


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## LarryDavid (Jan 4, 2007)

I guess I was privileged then with the whopping 3k on my VIC-20. Until I bought the mega 16K expansion pack that is.


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Tell that to the kids today, and you know what? They won't believe you.


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## tivofromdayone (Aug 19, 2005)

the average pc icon has more memory used than some of the games we used to play back in the day. We were having just such a conversation yesterday. Mother was playing a game on an ipod touch, stepdad was talking about pong. Fired the old iphone up and showed him pong on the phone. He was impressed. but when we ran 'jet set willy' on the spectrum emulator he was blown away. Funny old world.

The processing power we have today is always taken for granted. Only the oldies have any real experience of how much things have changed in the last 30 years).

By the way, has aybody watched the film 'micro men'? for any of you old enough to have used spectrums and BBC model B/electrons, its a brilliant (if dramatised) watch


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## LarryDavid (Jan 4, 2007)

tivofromdayone said:


> By the way, has aybody watched the film 'micro men'? for any of you old enough to have used spectrums and BBC model B/electrons, its a brilliant (if dramatised) watch


Sounds interesting, is it available for legit download anywhere?


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## tivofromdayone (Aug 19, 2005)

LarryDavid said:


> Sounds interesting, is it available for legit download anywhere?


no idea. I watched it at a friends house. never thought to ask if it was legit or not

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n5b92


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## Trinitron (Jan 20, 2003)

LarryDavid said:


> Sounds interesting, is it available for legit download anywhere?


Are any BBC programmes available for legitimate download outside of iPlayer?

FWIW, UKNova have copies.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Also available on thebox.bz in SD and HD, so a friend of mine says...


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## hatchejd (Jun 5, 2002)

TCM2007 said:


> 16MB? Luxury. My first PC had 640K. You had to program things properly in those days.


_"No-one will ever need more than 640k of RAM"_ - Bill Gates, 1981


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## TIVO_YORK99 (Feb 14, 2001)

hatchejd said:


> _"No-one will ever need more than 640k of RAM"_ - Bill Gates, 1981


I thought that was an urban myth, I've certainly read an interview with him where he totally denies ever saying that.


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## djqster (Oct 22, 2010)

TIVO_YORK99 said:


> I thought that was an urban myth, I've certainly read an interview with him where he totally denies ever saying that.


Probably it was a myth. But most microcomputers at the time could only even _address_ 64k never mind actually have that much. So the 640k figure of ten times your rivals' total address space looked like a nice round number at the time.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

hatchejd said:


> _"No-one will ever need more than 640k of RAM"_ - Bill Gates, 1981


The urban myth is repeated...IBM set the 640k limit (0xA0000 was address of CGA memory).


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Hencethe joys of expanded/extended memory and special drivers to shift things into "high" memory.

Never really goes away though as a problem - stick two 2Gb sticks into a Win7 32-bit computer and you'll still only get 3Gb-odd usable.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Ah the joys of endlessly fiddling with DOS extenders and Highmem.sys to get software to work - it takes me back to when our 486DX50 was considered state of the art.

Sorry we're back at this again aren't we 
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=466429&highlight=old+computers


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Remember the original tivo/linux kernel didn't support driver over 137GB ... not much headroom from 40GB was it? - not tivo's fault though.

Always another limit on the way - the next up and coming problem in PCs is booting from 3TB drives.


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## johnscott99 (Sep 23, 2002)

AMc said:


> Ah the joys of endlessly fiddling with DOS extenders and Highmem.sys to get software to work - it takes me back to when our 486DX50 was considered state of the art.
> 
> Sorry we're back at this again aren't we
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=466429&highlight=old+computers


"_*DX*"_? you were lucky!
We have an _*SX *_and you had to eat a block of freezing cold poison.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Would it surprise you to mention I was doing Virtual Reality software development on my DX - to be fair it had a Texas Instruments ISA card in it that cost more than the PC but still...


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

486? I remember fiitting a 386SX into a daughterboard which fitted in the 286 CPU socket.

Just skipped an IBM 8086 PC with a cassette port!


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## irrelevant (Mar 19, 2002)

Think yourselves lucky in having a processor to yourself ... the first 386 based PC I encountered was being set up as a multi-user system for ~16 dumb terminals!!


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## spitfires (Dec 19, 2006)

"286"? Luxury. My first PC was an 8086-based Apple-IBM clone thingy I bought in Singapore. Cost the earth. Windows 2. Lovely! Ran one program at a time and took a minute to load each different program. I had it hooked up for sending/receiving Telex's - made business communications so much faster than letters.  Still got it, in the attic.



TCM2007 said:


> Just skipped an IBM 8086 PC with a cassette port!


  There ought to be some sort of national 'puter museum where we can send all these old bits of kit for preservation.


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## Richard42 (Dec 27, 2000)

:up: There is a place - TNMOC ( The Nation Museum Of Computing ) at Bletchley - well worth a vist for a day of memories !

See http://www.tnmoc.org/

Richard


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## CarlWalters (Oct 17, 2001)

I'd second that - well worth a day out


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