Re: Java and Mac Hardware worst case test question

On 7/18/06, Greg Guerin <email@hidden> wrote:

Bill Wagner wrote:

>With all that said, what do you fellows feel would be a set of good low end
>(as in slow and old) machines to test against? The intent is to be able to
>determine what the CPU/speed limits should be on our product.

There's no simple answer.  (You knew I'd say that, right?)

You have to look at what your product is, who the target audience is, and
then estimate what kind of cost constraints most of them live under.  This
is typically a marketing task, but since you didn't describe your product
or your company, "typically" may not not apply to you.

I have a Bondi iMac that I test on as my low-end machine.  It doesn't have
enough RAM or disk space to put 10.4 on it, so it's strictly a 10.2 /10.3
machine, and it has dual boot partitions.  That said, it does run J2SE 1.4
fairly well, and can act as a server on the network without difficulties.
GUI-wise, it's so puny it's laughable, so I don't really consider it for
any serious GUI apps.  Simple Swing is fine, but anything fancy and it
crawls.

Of course, I don't require every app I write to run perfectly on the Bondi
iMac.  I'm just saying it's a useful metric for the very lowest end of
low-end.  I have a middle-range 500 MHz dual G4 that continues to work well
enough, and anything that runs fine on it will be more than fine on any
modern Mac.  It has an old yet still capable video card, but I don't do 3D
or JOGL or other heavy-duty graphics, so YMMV.

I got my Bondi iMac for free: a friend gave it to me.  I added a salvaged
DRAM module to bring it up to 256 MB, without which it's impossibly slow
due to swapping.

I'm not sure it's worth buying such an old machine, because the shipping
costs are more than the machine itself is worth.  Renting is even less
likely: a rental company would die laughing if you asked to rent one.

The main disadvantage to older units is physical size: CRTs are big and
heavy.  This is one area where old PowerBooks have a big advantage, but
that's also why they still have a viable market.  You could probably buy a
couple old PBs on eBay for a decent price, but get identical models so you
can swap parts between them when one dies.

Any Mac that has lots of RAM can be reconfigured to boot with less
effective RAM, which is a good way to test an app on a memory-limited
machine.  This can be very useful for temporarily going below the intrinsic
low-endness of a machine, or to force the OS to swap.

Reducing the Size of Physical Memory in Open Firmware:
< http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1099.html>

Disabling a CPU on a Multi-CPU System:
<http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1141.html >

And here's a list of Java versions and the corresponding OS versions:
<http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2110.html>

-- GG

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