I was unable to find any information (maybe I searched for the wrong terms??) about this topic so I thought I would ask.
*******I AM NOT TRYING TO SLAM ANYONE JUST ADDING A LITTLE BACKGROUND INFORMATION!!!*******
At my company, we have a piece of software that was written by someone who had no formal programming education.
We recently purchased a few new computers for my department and when opening a file with this piece of software, it puts the entire computational load on a single core and takes longer to open as compared to one of our old machines.
for example, an old computer has a Xeon W3550 and only needs about 30-45 seconds to load everything and the new computer has an i7-8700k and takes about 1.5 minutes or more to open the same file.
Could it be that the multi-threaded code isn't compatible with new processors? Could it be due to a lack of education from the original author?
any information would be greatly appreciated
Related
I'm currently writing my master dissertation about version control in Ms Excel and would love to understand the problem more thoroughly. Does anyone face the problem and would be willing to discuss this in a 10min zoom call? Will hopefully be able to provide the solution in 2 months time.
t.muller#lse.ac.uk
Problem description:
If I'm working on a spreadsheet and need input from my co-workers on the same spreadsheet, I'd start to send the sheet around (probably via Email if we worked on excel offline). Unfortunately, we tend to quickly lose an overview of the different versions in the chain, and it sometimes even happens that some of us are mistakenly working on an old version. As soon as we managed to gather the input from everyone, we struggle to get to the root of newly introduced bugs and understand and approve all changes made.
Does anybody know a sample of V4 Universal Printer Driver?
Actually, I was looking for a sample in last two days but I did not found any instance. All Universal Printer Drivers from many vendors are based on V3 print driver model.
It seems that close coupling among data files and V4 print driver model makes it difficult (even practically impossible) to develop UPDs.
At last I found a sample from Xerox. See here and here.
Xerox has released this driver package near a month ago (29.OCT.2018).
From my personal point of view it is not still a Global/Universal print/printer driver.
There are more than 250, .gpd files and more than 230 .dpb (driver property bag) files inside the package to cover all product range, means vendors have to create different .gpd (and may be .dpb) file for every single printer or even printer model.
It seems that there is a very long way to make this issue possible using this model.
I'm starting a project at work where the workers are supposed to get a scanner to scan barcodes on the vares that they use. Optimaly we would have a system supporting this, but we don't.
My thought is to be able to have excel running in the background on the computer they use to several other things, like reading newspapers and looking up todays weather etc. My understading of scanners is that they work just like a keyboard when connected to a computer, problems may then arise if someone is scanning barcodes, and another one is reading the newspaper in internet explorer, maybe the barcodes pops-up as a number in the URL(?), when it really should go to a specific cell in excel.
My question: Is it possible to make a scanner always return its values(scanned barcodes) to excel, EVENTHOUGH the computer may be used to something else at the same time?
Thanks for every thought and comment!
Have a nice weekend!
I do not think Excel would be the best solution to achieve this. It may be possible to achieve by linking to the scanner API and leveraging external libraries to listen for the scanner port etc. However, these kind of applications best be installed as system services e.g. Windows Service or as any other background application in .NET, Java, Python whatever. Excel is not the first choice technology to do these sort of things. Excel, however, can well be used for outputing this data.
What is more, honestly, the solution and feasibility will depend on the scanner API or driver.
Recently, i began developing a driver of an embedded device running linux.
Until now i have only read about linux internals.
Having no prior experience in driver devlopment, i am finding it a tad difficult to land my first step.
I have downloaded the kernel source-code (v2.6.32).
I have read (skimped) Linux Device Drivers (3e)
I read a few related posts here on StackOverflow.
I understand that linux has a "monolithic" approach.
I have built kernel (included existing driver in menuconfig etc.)
I know the basics of kconfig and makefile files so that should not be a problem.
Can someone describe the structure (i.e. the inter-links)
of the various directories in the kernel-source code.
In other words, given a source-code file,
which other files would it refer to for related code
(The "#include"-s provide a partial idea)
Could someone please help me in getting a better idea?
Any help will be greatly appreciated
Thank You.
Given a C file, you have to look at the functions it calls and data structures it uses, rather than worrying about particular files.
There are two basic routes to developing your own device driver:
Take a driver that is similar to yours; strip out the code that isn't applicable to your device, and fill in new code for your device.
Start with the very basic pieces of a device driver, and add pieces a little at a time until your device begins to function.
The files that compose your driver will make more sense as you complete this process. Do consider what belongs in each file, but to some extent, dividing a driver among files is more an art than a science. Smaller drivers often fit into just one or two files.
A bit of design may also be good. Consider what you device does, and what your driver will need to do. Based on that, you should be able to map out what functions a device driver will need to have.
I also believe Linux Device Drivers, Third Edition may help you get on your way to driver development.
Linux files themselves include files based on what they do, what layer they are in, and what layer they access of the call stack. The Big Picture truly informs how each file is related to the next.
I had to fix a kernel driver once. My biggest tip (if you use vim) is to set it up with ctags so you can jump around the kernel source with ctrl-] every time you see a function you don't understand.
resistors.org site and foxthompson.net download links are stale/broken.
http://www.resistors.org/index.php/The_SAM76_programming_language
Every other link I've been able to track down on the 'net (mostly in old newsgroup posts) are broken. E-mails to the respective webmasters all bounced.
I have a morbid curiosity for arcane programming languages, and SAM76 sounded really interesting to look into and mess around with.
There are quite a few lisp folks lurking on this site, so figured somebody might have a lead... as I heard SAM76 had some early redimentary functional programming ideas.
Extra credit: link to track down a copy of the SAM76 manual!
Wayback has a copy of S76.exe for DOS and Windows
http://web.archive.org/web/20070505122813/http://www.resistors.org/index.php/The_SAM76_programming_language
http://wikivisually.com/wiki/SAM76
http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Sam76
http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Algorithms_in_Sam76
======================= F R E E W A R E =======================
User-Supported Software
If you are using this program and find it to be of value
your $20 contribution will be appreciated.
A contribution of $30 will bring you the SAM76 language
manual and other useful and interesting documentation.
SAM76 Inc., Box 257 RR1
Pennington, N.J., 08534
U.S.A.
Regardless of whether you make a contribution,
you are encouraged to copy and share this program.
> ---------------------------------------------------
http://web.archive.org/web/20110726163455/http://www.hypernews.org/HyperNews/get/computing/lang-list/2/2/1.html
I believe the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.s (have no idea what the letters
mean) was a group of kids who played with computers and
electronics in Claude Kagan's barn in Pennington, N.J. near
Princeton. Because the developer of TRAC, Calvin Mooers,
spent the rest of his life inventing the software patent and
sued everyone in sight, Claude (whose employer, Western
Electric Laboratories was sued by Mooers) created a very
similar language called "SAM76" supposedly based on S7 and M6
"languages from Bell Labs". I have the original tutorial
manual written and illustrated by the R.E.S.... and versions
on paper tape for the Altair and TRS-80 floppy disk. I think
it looked more like #os#is;; but you could change all the
special characters and command names so it could be made to
look EXACTLY like TRAC. Claude wrote some neat graphic games
for the TRS-80 in SAM76/TRAC.
http://web.archive.org/web/20110726163335/http://www.hypernews.org/HyperNews/get/computing/lang-list/2/2/1/3.html
Yes, we RESISTORS did indeed meet in Claude's barn which was filled with old telephone and computer equipment. Claude's version of TRAC started on the PDP-8, migrated to the PDP-10, and for the legal reasons mentioned ended up as SAM-76. (FYI, SAM stands either for "Strachey and McIlroy" or "Same As Mooers". RESISTORS always stood for "Radically Emphatic Students Interested in Science, Technology, and Other Research Studies" as much as it stood for anything.
Starting when we were members of the RESISTORS, Peter Eichenberger and I wrote a PDP-10 TRAC processor and later reimplemented it for the PDP-11, eventually adding a little multi-terminal time-sharing monitor. We kept a lower profile than Western Electric (either that, or as 19 year olds we had no noticable assets) so we and Mooers stayed on cordial terms.
I don't know if this is useful, but on this page there is an email adress dsf#hci.ucsd.edu which seems to be Dave Fox's one, the guy who maintained the page hosting the SAM76 file.
There's a pile of information in the old SIMTEL archives, specifically CPMUG Volume 34, which is included in the nearly 13G download here including example code. You have your choice of "DSK" and "ARK" (ARC) format images. The standard {file} utility knows what format it's in {CPMUG034.ARC: ARC archive data, dynamic LZW} SIG/M v. 53 also has SAM76 information and you can find it here.