Mac vs. Amiga
Elliott Buchholz
I am currently in the process of buying a personal computer. I have
narrowed myself down to either a Mac or an Amiga, due to personal
preference, software availability, and flexibility. But I can't seem
to decide what would be my best decision. All my Mac friends scream,
"Buy Mac!!!" My Amiga friends retort, "Don't be silly! Amiga is
state-of-the-art."
So I ask, what do you people think is the better of the two, and
why? As far as price goes, the deals I have are:
Mac-plus: Est. $1550 for Mac (1 meg memory), Imagewriter II printer,
and second drive
Amiga: Est. $1650 for Amiga, Expansion board (512 k), color
monitor, and second drive (printer not in deal-- est.
another $450 or so)
I would appreciate some as-unbiased-as-possible opinions on what my
best deal is.
Please E-mail your responses to me, and I will tally up the responses
and post what the general majority opinion is.
Elliott Buchholz
Looking for a glitchy phrase
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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Let the pigeons loose!!!
Laurence R. Brothers
"Don't be silly!"
Get an Atari ST! Like 1/2 the price of the amiga and essentially the
same features. OK, the amiga has a little better graphics, but then
the ST has a better OS..... Also, you can get higher memory models
of the ST cheaper still (1040 K ST is < $1000, including monitor, disc
drive)
Also, if you like Mac software, you can get a cartridge relatively
cheaply that plugs into the st case and presto -- color Mac.
Apparently, the ST actually runs many Mac program faster than the
Mac...
--
Laurence R. Brothers
brot...@topaz.rutgers.edu
{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4!packard}!topaz!brothers
"I can't control my fingers -- I can't control my brain -- Oh nooooo!"
Amiga-Man
which the Amiga offers which you should take into consideration:
- A true multitasking OS. I find this feature very important.
- Great graphics (fast!) AND NTSC compatibility.
- You can mail order a reconditioned one for alot less than the price
you mentioned. This is a temporary advantage.
- The sidecar option (plugs into amiga and contains an IBM clone) gives
you simple and effective total IBM compatibility (blek :-)).
- Lots of Public domain stuff in SOURCE form. Great for budding programmers.
Good luck on your choice !
Dave Haynie
> "Don't be silly!"
"Don't be ignorant!"
> Get an Atari ST! Like 1/2 the price of the amiga
More like 3/4 or more of the price, depending on configurations.
> and essentially the same features.
Get a clue, pal...
> OK, the amiga has a little better graphics
ya, like 640x400x4 vs 640x400x1, etc. MUCH better, not a little better.
> but then the ST has a better OS.....
Technically, the Atari doesn't even HAVE an OS. A DOS, maybe, and a
set of BIOS calls, certainly, but no OS. The Atari's BIOS is an
attempted clone of MS-DOS, and causes lots of problems. Like hard
disks that get unbareably slow with partitions greater than 5 Megs,
and go ape on you when you get something over 40 subdirectories on
them. The Amiga IS the only computer in this price range that has a
real OS. If you don't know what a real OS is, I can suggest several
books on the subject. Or ask a UNIX wiz why MS-DOS doesn't qualify
as a real OS.
> Also, you can get higher memory models of the ST cheaper still (1040 K ST
> is < $1000, including monitor, disc drive)
Of course, you can buy an Amiga and not need a "higher memory model".
I've got one here with a megabyte, there's one in the next office with
512K, I've another around here with 4 megabytes on it. All the same
model. If next year you decide that a megabyte isn't enough, you can
add several more. And since the Amiga's OS multitasks, you can do
real things with that memory, not just attempt to get by with kludges
like "desk accessories" or "memory-resident utilities". The machine
I'm typing on now has a CLI window open in the background doing a
diskcopy, and as well I've got a screen blanking program, clock,
print server, and a few other tasks running. Just try that on one
of the other machines.
> Laurence R. Brothers
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
"You can keep my things, they've come to take me home"
-Peter Gabriel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Edward Woody
Uh, isn't this COMP.SYS.MAC, and not COMP.SYS.MAC&AMIGA&ATARI&Whatever else?
I think the Amiga is cute, and the Atari is cute, and they both are great
machines for certain tasks, just as the Mac is cute and great for whatever
tasks it's good for.
But can we leave the follow ups on if the Amiga is better than the Atari
somewhere else?
Thanks.
- William Woody Mac! > ][n && /|\
wo...@tybalt.caltech.edu
wo...@juliet.caltech.edu
Dave D'Souza
Come on, let's stop this ridiculous debate now. This subject has been
beaten to death already. Please note that the original submitter of
the question asked that resposes be e-mailed directly to him and NOT
posted to the net. Also, a summary was promised and this will be more
interesting than the individual letters.
Please don't bother others with this cruft. I am quite sure many have
had to replace worn out K keys after previous such debates.
Here is is original author's address...
In article <85...@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> buch...@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Elliott Buchholz) writes:
> {stuff deleted}
>I would appreciate some as-unbiased-as-possible opinions on what my
>best deal is.
>
>Please E-mail your responses to me, and I will tally up the responses
============================
>and post what the general majority opinion is.
>^ ARPA: buch...@topaz.rutgers.edu ^
William Edward Woody
Apologies to those on comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.m68k, and comp.sys.misc,
for the previous flame I posted. I wanted it to only go to comp.sys.mac...
I feel so stupid...
Ravi Subrahmanyan
>>
>> "Don't be silly!"
>
>"Don't be ignorant!"
I won't argue the price/os issues, that's subjective and it's your
money if you get suckered into a bad deal.. however, some of these
statements smack of ignorance on Dave's part (reminds me of the thing about
fellows in grass houses not storing thrones..)
>Like hard
>disks that get unbareably slow with partitions greater than 5 Megs,
>and go ape on you when you get something over 40 subdirectories on
>them.
Not true. I have 10 & 16 Meg partitions on my 30 Meg disk, and
it books along quite well, thank you. This is really a moot point,
however. I put together a 30 Meg hard disk for my Atari for $600.
(You can buy a 20 Meg one for $650). *All* my friends with Amiga's
are limping along with two floppies because they can't find real hard
disks for comparable (affordable?) prices (even something that plugs
into the printer port (for heavens sake!) is $850 or so around here)
I get to see them eyeing my drive every now and then, and after that I
don't even mind the 40 folder limit (for which Atari's worked out a
patch-fix, by the way).
>
>Of course, you can buy an Amiga and not need a "higher memory model".
The original poster didn't know about boards that can be
bought for the ST that can be populated to go up to 4 Meg.
> ... Amiga's multitasking OS ... don't need desk accs ...
Dave's one ironclad point. The Amiga's multitasking *is*
great. However, I look upon this as a difference in the machine's
characters, not an issue for mudslinging. Does everyone want
multitasking? I'm not sure.. (after all, it might slow my hard
disk down :-)
I imagine everyone is sick of this debate, so why doesn't
someone direct followups to the place it all started (now that I've
got my two bits in)?
-ravi
Chuck Fisher
The following is excerpted from an article in the January, 1987
issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal of Software Tools. "Macintosh
Buttons and Amiga Gadgets" was written by Jan L. Hamington who
is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at
Bentley College. She is the author of "Macintosh Assembly
Language: An Introduction.
"This article explores the details of the standard Macintosh and
Amiga user interfaces, examines the system routines programmers
use to create those interfaces, and discusses those system
routines through a pair of sample 68000 assembly-language
programs that support a portion of the standard user
interfaces.
"It might be unfair to base an evaluation of the system routines
of the Macintosh and Amiga simply on the subset of the routines
designed to manipulate the user interface. On the other hand,
the programming strategies used to implement the standard user
interfaces are similar to those required for other system
operations. In general, the Macintosh's routines isolate
programmers from low-level tasks such as list manipulation and
initialization of data structures (File Manager parameter
blocks are notable exceptions). Although this reduces the
burden on the programmer, it can decrease the programmer's
flexibility. The Macintosh routines are also more complete in
terms of their support for the documented user interface. The
effect is again to reduce the burden placed on the programmer.
"On the Amiga, the Intuition library provides routines for the
standard user interface. Although support for screen, windows,
menus, and fonts is available, there is a great gap in terms of
text editing. In other words, the Amiga does not provide
system routines to fully implement its own standard interface
recommendations. As someone who writes more programs that rely
on text manipulation than on graphics, I believe that this is a
serious deficiency. It is true that the Amiga performs some
functions "automatically" for which a Macintosh program must
include code (for example, moving and sizing windows).
Nonetheless, the Macintosh does include system routines to
handle those functions."
What Jan seems to be saying is that the Amiga has an advantage
to programming graphics and animation oriented applications
over the Macintosh. But for text oriented applications the
Macintosh provides better support in terms of system library
routines. This sort of reaffirms the idea of the Amiga being a
great game machine while the Macintosh is targeted more towards
"business" applications. Looking at the software available for
each machine also confirms this orientation.
The bottom line is that in choosing between a Macintosh, Amiga,
or Atari one should look to see whether the applications
available meets one's expectations.
Flame on: Although Amiga touts its multi-tasking capability,
how many programs are written to take advantge of it? I would
agree that "background printing" is desireable, but a Mac can
do that as well as an Amiga. Most of the work that I do on the
Mac are interactive in nature, and don't lend themselves that
well to true multitasking. Switcher and Servant provide most
of the capabilities needed to integrate foreground tasks in my
opinion.
Much as I hate to say it, but the success of a machine is not
based solely on hardware, or the elegance of the user interface.
Instead, what guarantees success is the name and backing of the
manufacturer plus the willingness of third-party developers to
produce software. When enough machines have been sold and
enough software written, the machine then becomes a "success"
and continues to generate momentum for some time. The Mac has
achieved this level in the past 12 months, but I am afraid the
Atari and Amiga have not.
Erik Kilk
I would wait to see what the new Macs have to offer. Hopefully the wait
won't be more than a few months. Otherwise you might regret you didn't
wait.
Erik
Richard Sansom
>"Don't be ignorant!"
>> Get an Atari ST! Like 1/2 the price of the amiga
>More like 3/4 or more of the price, depending on configurations.
O.k., I know of several places that offer a 520 ST (monochrome, 512K, 1
drive) for ~$500. That sounds closer to 1/3 the price of the Amiga's
$1500 (color monitor, 512K, 1 drive). And I've never heard of a single
monochrome-ST owner trying to find a replacement for their original
monitor.
>> and essentially the same features.
>Get a clue, pal...
>> OK, the amiga has a little better graphics
>ya, like 640x400x4 vs 640x400x1, etc. MUCH better, not a little better.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Purely subjective. The Amiga can display more colors then the ST - if
you need more color, get an Amiga. However, I've yet to see a _single_
program on the Amiga which could not be done on the ST (I stress single
because of the next bit...).
>> but then the ST has a better OS.....
>Technically, the Atari doesn't even HAVE an OS. A DOS, maybe, and a
>set of BIOS calls, certainly, but no OS....
>...The Amiga IS the only computer in this price range that has a
>real OS....
Agreed. The ST's OS leaves alot to be desired. Atari should spend
more time writing a real OS for the ST than coming out with new
computer lines. In my opinion, the Amiga's only real advantage over
the ST is in it's ability to run muliple tasks. Even though there are
ways to multitask on the ST (MTC-shell, OS/9, FORTH, etc), it would've
been nice if Atari had taken care of this for us.
Sorry to contribute to this silly discussion, but you knew someone was
going to rebut that last article. How did this latest bout of Amiga v.s.
ST get started anyway?
-Rich
--
__________ ______ ____ _____ ___
/_________//___ ||__|/____|/__/ Richard E. Sansom
___ ____/ / ____________ TRW Electronics & Defense Sector
/ / / /\ < | /| / One Space Park Drive, R3/1028
/ / / / \ \ | / | / Redondo Beach, CA 90278
/__/ /__/ \__\|__/ |__/ ...{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!trwrb!sansom
jafi...@watrose.uucp
In article <6...@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ra...@ATRP.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Amiga-Man) writes:
> ... [talks about advantages of Amiga]
>- A true multitasking OS. I find this feature very important.
I'm really curious: just how great is multitasking? I.e., how much do
you, the typical Amiga owners, use this feature? Even on Unix I find that the
only thing I consistently use '&' for is printing, and on my ST I have a wide
range of print spoolers to choose from. And when I'm in the edit-compile-edit
cycle, the speed of Megamax compile-time, coupled with a RAMdisk, makes multi-
tasking a 'yeah it would be nice, but not utterly world-stopping' luxury.
(There is a multitasking C-Shell, but it's basically non-GEM, and still
pretty buggy).
But then again... I _don't_ envy your high (until recently) prices,
nor your apparently buggy OS (see message 1292 in comp.sys.amiga!), but...
I _DO_ envy your multitasking! I'm just curious how useful it
actually is. I.e., is it that necessary in a personal computer,
and is it worth the slow-down in execution? Even though I would really _like_
it, would I really use it that much?
Uh oh, this could be taken as a typical my-PC-is-better-than-yours
posting. It isn't. The main intent of this posting is the question of
multitasking.
- Jonathan Fischer
j...@gssc.uucp
*** tongue in cheek flame on ***
ok, enough of this crap about which is better: the amiga, mac, or atari.
they're all toys!!
a buddy of mine has an amiga, so i went over to have a look-see and find out
what all this psychobabble was all about. i found this puny litte box that
was hardly as big as my vt100! he mumbled something about a 68 or other
"micro-processor" being able to outstrip a vax "on some operations." like
what? certainly not disk accesses!! these newfangled "boxes" don't even have
*real* disk drives. i mean, what good is a little three and a half inch
jobbie compared to my 12-platter rm-05's?
i had brought some "real" software over to test this thing - you know, fire up
a couple makes an troff jobs and see what happens - but it seems that he didn't
have no nine-track for his little pee-cee. hrmph.
so he showed me some graphics. who needs 'em? i don't program by drawin'
perty pitchers. hell, i dunno about you, but my compiler uses TEXT, fer
crissake, and when the compiler don't do what i want, i talk to the assembler,
and if *that* don't fix it, i use od(1) and ipatch(1) to party on the bits as
they lie there sitting pretty on the disk. graphics, ha!! real programmers
don't *need* graphics. better put a tourniquete on it before y'all BLT to
death! i always knew you boys had some strange, genetic DDA problems.
anyhoo, if y'all own one o' them pee-cees, don't fret too much. you can still
impress your ignorant friends. unless they been down to the video arcade and
seed some *real* neet pitchers. that's okay though. real programmers didn't
make them, either.
you can still dial-up to a real computer and do some real work, i suppose,
till yer damn kids wanna use the phone.
or, you can do your checkbook on it, if you got the extra time to write all
that stuff down twice.
well, now wait a sec - you can use it as a typewriter. yeah, that's it. that's
the ticket. a $2000 typewriter!! you're all set!! i *knew* there was a
reason you had to have that thing. add a few bucks more for a cuisenart word
processor and you've got it!!
me? no thanks, i'll stick to troff. real programmers don't need wizzy wigs.
unless their hair is falling out.
*** flame off =) ***
-- jdm
NOTE: the above opinions may or may not be my own. think what you will.
Andy Beals
>A DOS, maybe,
DOS stands for "Disk Operating System".
>The Atari's BIOS is an attempted clone of MS-DOS
Wrong. If you would sit down and read the CP/M68K manuals, you would
find that it is essentially just a port of CP/M80 to the 68k. I won't
say anything about CP/M in general being a single-user clone of TOPS-10...
MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) began life as Seattle Microcomputer Product's DOS-86,
an 8086 clone of CP/M80 (circa '80 or '81), which they sold as operating
system software (along with a translated, slow and unoptimized copy of
Microsoft Basic (v4.51?)) for the 8086 s100 board that they made. As far
as I remember, DOS-86 arrived on the scene a little earlier than DRI's
CP/M86.
With a mind for ancient history,
andy
--
Andrew Scott Beals, {lll-crg,decwrl,allegra}!amdcad!bandy +1 408 749 3683
Tim Smith
>
> The Amiga IS the only computer in this price range that has a
> real OS. If you don't know what a real OS is, I can suggest
> several books on the subject. Or ask a UNIX wiz why MS-DOS
> doesn't qualify as a real OS.
Please explain how the Amiga has a real OS, but the Mac does
not. While you're at it, please explain why Amiga-DOS is a real
OS, but PX/IX is not.
--
Religion: just say "no"
Tim Smith USENET: sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim Compuserve: 72257,3706
Delphi or GEnie: mnementh
i...@minnie.uucp
>I am currently in the process of buying a personal computer. I have
>narrowed myself down to either a Mac or an Amiga, due to personal
>preference, software availability, and flexibility. But I can't seem
>to decide what would be my best decision. All my Mac friends scream,
>"Buy Mac!!!" My Amiga friends retort, "Don't be silly! Amiga is
>state-of-the-art."
> So I ask, what do you people think is the better of the two, and
>why? As far as price goes, the deals I have are:
>
>Mac-plus: Est. $1550 for Mac (1 meg memory), Imagewriter II printer,
> and second drive
>Amiga: Est. $1650 for Amiga, Expansion board (512 k), color
> monitor, and second drive (printer not in deal-- est.
> another $450 or so)
>
>I would appreciate some as-unbiased-as-possible opinions on what my
>best deal is.
>
>Please E-mail your responses to me, and I will tally up the responses
>and post what the general majority opinion is.
>
> Elliott Buchholz
> Looking for a glitchy phrase
>
Well, you know the old phrase "you can wait forever", but I am going to
suggest exactly that. Personally, I think the Amiga has certain
hardware and OS advantages, but the Mac is better supported and likely
to stay around longer. I would however, suggest that you wait a few
weeks and see what Apple is about to announce. I don't know much about
the projected availability dates, but there are supposed to be several
really super new products being announced VERY shortly (like perhaps
this weekend).
If they announce what I think they will, I will probably buy the
high-end 68020(30?) system for myself. It'll be a nice replacement for
my current intel/MS-DOG machine, and rumor has it that there will be a
vmunix (probably berkeley) available for it (although not immediately).
--I
--
uucp: ihnp4!nrcvax!ihm
George Robbins
>
>Flame on: Although Amiga touts its multi-tasking capability,
>how many programs are written to take advantge of it? I would
>agree that "background printing" is desireable, but a Mac can
>do that as well as an Amiga. Most of the work that I do on the
>Mac are interactive in nature, and don't lend themselves that
>well to true multitasking. Switcher and Servant provide most
>of the capabilities needed to integrate foreground tasks in my
>opinion.
You were doing good up till this, but now it looks like you are maybe
missing an important point. When the system software is designed with
multi-tasking in mind, programs don't have to be written to take
advantage of multi-tasking. It's just an option that exits when the
*user* needs/wants it. The is one place where the MAC blew it, using
an event loop philosophy that sounds an awful lot like some 60's style*
design to implement state-of-the-art human interfaces.
* primitive online systems required batch programs to test for special
events in their main processing loops, and branch to a special inquiry
routine/program to handle requests from the 'online' terminal(s). We're
talking 20-25 years ago, IBM 1401's and stuff. Can you say 'desk
accessory'?
--
George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!g...@seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
George Robbins
>
>Sorry to contribute to this silly discussion, but you knew someone was
>going to rebut that last article. How did this latest bout of Amiga v.s.
>ST get started anyway?
>-Rich
Some poor person asked for help in deciding which system to buy, sigh. Enuff...
Tim Smith
>OS, but PX/IX is not.
That is, of course, PC/IX, not PX/IX. Oops.
jtr...@umich.uucp
>
> > but then the ST has a better OS.....
> Technically, the Atari doesn't even HAVE an OS. A DOS, maybe, and a
> set of BIOS calls, certainly, but no OS. The Atari's BIOS is an
> attempted clone of MS-DOS, and causes lots of problems. Like hard
> disks that get unbareably slow with partitions greater than 5 Megs,
> and go ape on you when you get something over 40 subdirectories on
> them. The Amiga IS the only computer in this price range that has a
> real OS. If you don't know what a real OS is, I can suggest several
> books on the subject. Or ask a UNIX wiz why MS-DOS doesn't qualify
> as a real OS.
So, tell me. What makes a DOS not an OS?
AmiganaworkDOS (am i gana work DOS) doesn't quite cut it either.
But, for the cost of the Amiga you can get an ST, OS/9 and OS/9 C.
OS/9 is a serious multitasking OS. Built small but built properly.
FYI: 1/2 the price is closer to the mark when you compare the 520 Mono ST
to a 512K Amiga.
Lest you get me wrong, I do think as marketed the ST does not compare to the
Amiga. But, neither is what is could very easily be and should be. What
is hurting both machines is the need to pull good margin to hold up corporate
ships with large holes in their hulls.
--j.a.tainter
Mike Meyer
>In an article, Dave Haynie writes:
>>
>> The Amiga IS the only computer in this price range that has a
>> real OS. If you don't know what a real OS is, I can suggest
>> several books on the subject. Or ask a UNIX wiz why MS-DOS
>> doesn't qualify as a real OS.
>
>Please explain how the Amiga has a real OS, but the Mac does
>not. While you're at it, please explain why Amiga-DOS is a real
>OS, but PX/IX is not.
I didn't make the first quote (and I disagree with it), but let me
answer the questions anyway:
First, a definition. A "program loader" is a program that puts other
programs in memory, and passes control of the machine to them. If you
enhance these with a set of routines for doing hardware-dependent
things in a consistent manner, and make the entry points the same on
all hardware, you have something like CP/M. Those who deal with large
computers don't consider these to be a "real OS" (I deal with large
computers, and have dealt with such creatures; I agree with the snobs
:-).
My understanding is that this *IS* what the Mac provides. Once an
applications program has control of the machine, it's got control of
the machine, and has to wait for the program to give it back. There's
no way for it to run code - either it's own, or another applications
program - unless the application permits it. Am I wrong?
Now, the questionable statment also said "in this price range." Gotta
be carefull how you define price range. Since peripherals can be added
arbitrarily, let's look at the smallest machine that will run the OS
in question. ST's apparently start at about $500, and an Amiga can be
put together for $900 or so (one drive, 256K and a TV for a monitor).
Let's arbitrarily label the price range as $500-$1000 (I assume that
minimal Mac's can be found in that price range, also). If you can
build a system that runs Pick-Axe for < $1000, then there's a second
system with a real OS, even by strict definitions (well, I do know
people who don't consider variations on Sys III & V as real OS's, but
we'll ignore them for now).
On the other hand, I know that the RS Coler Computer runs a real OS
(OS/9, either Level I or Level II; the latter meaning you have an MMU
and protected memory, even!). I think a low-end CoCo, even enough for
level II, is still under $500, so it's not in the price range I chose,
either :-). But add a requirement for a good monitor, and it'll be in
that price range. This is why I disagree with the above statement;
it's caused by under-exposure to the micro market.
<mike
Matt Dillon
To Mr Chuck Fisher Specifically
The excerp that CF posted originally (which started this war) is
essentially correct. One of your added comments (below), however, is
completely incorrect and has already been brained to death in previous
wars between these two newsgroups:
>Flame on: Although Amiga touts its multi-tasking capability,
>how many programs are written to take advantge of it? I would
>agree that "background printing" is desireable, but a Mac can
>do that as well as an Amiga. Most of the work that I do on the
>Mac are interactive in nature, and don't lend themselves that
>well to true multitasking. Switcher and Servant provide most
>of the capabilities needed to integrate foreground tasks in my
>opinion.
You obviously don't understand the concept of multitasking.
To-wit, the idea is that you can run several completely unassociated programs
at the same time without any of them knowing or caring that the others are
also running. There doesn't have to be any 'software' that 'takes advantage
of multitasking', the multitasking allows the user to fully use the
machine and however much memory it has in any way he chooses. For instance
(and I take a standard example), I frequently use my terminal program while
compiling large sources.
There seems to be the misconception that multitasking
presumes a slowdown in throughput. Certainly running two compiles
simultaniously from RAM disk would cause each compile to run half as fast,
but consider more common occurances: Taking the former example one
notes that the terminal program takes almost no CPU (it's continuously
waiting for keystrokes or chars from the modem), and thus both tasks run
at essentially full speed. The same goes for most other programs one might
be using... the USER is still a single tasking entity with limited interrupt
capability. The USER knows exactly what is running when, and why, because
he has full control over all the programs he runs.
But you should remember that what this user views as a sequential
singularity usually requires multitasking on the computer in question:
"Ho Hum reading my mail with my terminal program. Let's see, I want to
do a compile. OK, start the compile, go back to my terminal program..."
Switcher and Servant attest to the fact that most MAC people
understand what multitasking is and want it on their machines. I can but
agree with them.
-Matt
David W. Berry
poster specificall requested comments by >MAIL<. Let's can
it huh? At least don't distribute to multiple groups...
David
--
David W. Berry
d...@well.uucp dwb@Delphi
dwb@GEnie 293-...@408.MaBell
Alan J Rosenthal
In article <2...@elxsi.UUCP> fis...@elxsi.UUCP (Chuck Fisher) quotes from an
article in the January, 1987 issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal of Software Tools,
"Macintosh Buttons and Amiga Gadgets" written by Jan L. Hamington:
...
>The Macintosh routines are also more complete in
>terms of their support for the documented user interface.
>It is true that the Amiga performs some
>functions "automatically" for which a Macintosh program must
>include code (for example, moving and sizing windows).
I find it necessary to point out that, like many other things on the mac,
windows are not completely implemented. Just like multitasking, which is
not really implemented on the mac in the sense that a task always has to
voluntarily give up its control of the cpu (by calling SystemTask, I think it
is)*, with windows the mac doesn't store what's obscured when a window goes
on top of another window. Therefore the user program must store this at all
times, because it is wiped out before the user program gets notified that the
window has been obscured. Then the user program must redraw the contents of
the window that was obscured when the window is brought to front again.
Therefore I think it is a gross understatement to say that the Amiga merely
performs these functions automatically rather than the user program having
to do it itself. The Amiga supports windows completely and the Mac does not.
On the Amiga, for example, you can draw into a backgrounded window, one of
the fundamental things you might want to do with a window.
ajr
* It's true that on the Amiga you can block task switching. I don't know
how common this capability is in general, but this is not the same. A
looping program on the mac blocks task switching, for example, and does
not on the Amiga. Anyway, my favourite large-computer-that-must-be-kept-in-
an-air-conditioned-room was the dec10 running tops10, which also had this
capability to ignore task switching, and it ran hundreds of users at a time
& no one ever said it wasn't multitasking.
Chuck McManis
>
> [ .. Actually he quotes from Dr. Dobbs but I've deleted that part ..]
> Flame on: Although Amiga touts its multi-tasking capability,
> how many programs are written to take advantge of it? I would
> agree that "background printing" is desireable, but a Mac can
> do that as well as an Amiga. Most of the work that I do on the
> Mac are interactive in nature, and don't lend themselves that
> well to true multitasking. Switcher and Servant provide most
> of the capabilities needed to integrate foreground tasks in my
> opinion.
Unfortunately the above is a misconception held by many people. One
of the nice things about multitasking on the Amiga is that it is
built into the system. That means YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING
SPECIAL TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. Every program you run is added
to the list of things to run as far as it is concerned it has the
whole machine to itself. When you were in college did you have to
do anything to make your programs take advantage of multitasking on
the mainframe? Of course not, you ran your programs and other people
ran their programs, and sometimes you would send things out to the
printer while continuing to work on your code and the program
printed *while you worked*. It is the same on the Amiga, if you
want to start something from the workbench then just double click
on it's icon, whatever you are currently running won't stop, it
just keeps on chugging and the new application starts up. The system
makes sure both programs don't grab the disk at the same time or
write to the same file at the same time etc, you code just runs
blythely along. And if your code wants to talk to other tasks on the
machine it opens a message port and gives it a name, then any other
task can look for that message port and start conversing. The only
limit on all of this is memory, since there is no virtual memory
capability if you run one program that takes all of memory then you
cannot run another if it won't fit.
> Much as I hate to say it, but the success of a machine is not
> based solely on hardware, or the elegance of the user interface.
> Instead, what guarantees success is the name and backing of the
> manufacturer plus the willingness of third-party developers to
> produce software. When enough machines have been sold and
> enough software written, the machine then becomes a "success"
> and continues to generate momentum for some time. The Mac has
> achieved this level in the past 12 months, but I am afraid the
> Atari and Amiga have not.
This is an entirely true and entirely misleading statement. Yes in
the last year the Mac has finally broken through that undefinable
area that makes it a "real" machine. This was three years after it's
introduction! One year after the Amiga and Atari were introduced
*both* Atari and CBM sold more of their respective machines in the
first year than Apple sold Mac's. They also have more software a
year after their intro than the Mac did, and more peripherals. If
they follow that trend, then in three years their combined installed
base will be *eight* times the current Mac installed Base. But
everyone knows projections are wildly unreliable things, it could
be worse, it could be better.
Apologies if the SNR of this message is below 50%...
--
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcm...@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
Atul Kacker
>>
>
>"Don't be ignorant!"
>
>> Get an Atari ST! Like 1/2 the price of the amiga
>
Could you Amiga/Atari haters/lovers get the &^%$ out of this
newsgroup.
u...@psuvm.bitnet.uucp
I believe CP/M was a clone of one of the PDP-11 operating systems,
not TOPS-10. Of course, TOPS and RT-11 (or whatever) are enough alike
that it don't matter much.
lee
ro...@ulowell.uucp
>"Don't be silly!"
>
>same features. OK, the amiga has a little better graphics, but then
>the ST has a better OS..... Also, you can get higher memory models
*flame on*
sigh, here we go again.
Ok, so you say the Atari has a better OS. Case
in point. I'm kermiting down a whole directory of public domain stuff
from a BSD system. When, I suddently realize, oh crud, not only am
I going to run out of RAM, I am using the dynamic RAM drive, but I
don't have enough space on the floppy when I take the files out of ram
and move them to the floppy. Solution, bring up another couple of
MULTIPROCESSING windows. One runs compress on each file on the RAM
disk as it comes in, and another copies it out to disk and deletes it,
after it has been compressed, hopefully :-). It worked, I got 1.5M
of compressed stuff out onto that disk, and then took it home to deal
with it. The point of this is, that a statement that multiprocessing
is what makes the Amiga. The statment that the ST has a better OS
is a sign of true ignorance. Take a course in OS's before you speak,
and you are guilty of misinformation. Personally I dislike Micro's
in general, but the Amiga and its OS are the first of more to come
that are usable. (Micros I mean, no no not a rumor) I just can
stand doing one thing at a time slowly. All right, this is the first
time I gave into tempation and replied to one of these, but I can't
stand ignorance.
*flame off*
>of the ST cheaper still (1040 K ST is < $1000, including monitor, disc
>drive)
>
>Also, if you like Mac software, you can get a cartridge relatively
>cheaply that plugs into the st case and presto -- color Mac.
>Apparently, the ST actually runs many Mac program faster than the
>Mac...
Yea, and the amiga can be turned into an IBM. I have seen an ST emulator
on the Amiga also, but never say it work. A c64 emulator also exists,
and there are constant rumors of a Mac emulator. But, notice that no
one is emulating the Amiga. Two possibilities:
1.) The Amiga is failing, naw, to much loyalty, and commodore stock
continues to rise.
2.) The Amiga is truly a cut above, or state of the art, and can't be
emulated by the more primitive hardware and OSes.
Ross Miller
uucp: ro...@ulowell.uucp
csnet: ross%ulowel...@csnet-relay.arpa
disclaimer: These are not the opinions of my employers. They don't
care. This was written by the same monkeys who came up
with shakespere. (sp?) :-)
Tim Smith
as relevant as the Byte one ( which favored the Amiga ). In other
words, it is not relevant. A sane programmer only writes this
stuff once. From then on, he/she re-uses it rather than re-write
it. Thus, it doesn't matter if one of the machines provides slightly
more support for windows or slightly more support for text.
--
Tim Smith
for why one wants multitasking. On the Mac, I use LightspeedC.
The compiler and linker are so fast, I don't have time to read
my mail! :-)
A better example would be doing some slow operation on a large
database while reading mail.
Tim Smith
>>
>>Please explain how the Amiga has a real OS, but the Mac does
>>not. While you're at it, please explain why Amiga-DOS is a real
>
>My understanding is that this *IS* what the Mac provides. Once an
>applications program has control of the machine, it's got control of
>the machine, and has to wait for the program to give it back. There's
>no way for it to run code - either it's own, or another applications
>program - unless the application permits it. Am I wrong?
>
If I am running Switcher or Servant on a Mac, then I may have
multiple programs loaded. Context is switched by explicit action
on my part, while, say, on my UNIX system, it can also be
switched by explicit action on the part of the clock. I don't
see an essential difference as far as the operating-systemness of
either system goes.
Also, I thought that the Amiga only switched tasks when the currently
executing task does something that would block ( IO, or something like
the UNIX sleep or pause system calls )? Is this so?
If someone can come up with a good definition of "operating system",
then it would be possible to decide which computers have them. One
OS textbook I saw defined an operating system as the software that
takes control when a user program makes an error, but that definition
seems kind of worthless.
--
Peter Arrgh Korn
>"Don't be silly!"
>Also, if you like Mac software, you can get a cartridge relatively
>cheaply that plugs into the st case and presto -- color Mac.
>Apparently, the ST actually runs many Mac program faster than the
>Mac...
I hate to continue this discussion, but the above assertion is an outright
LIE!
Some friends of mine who own Atari ST machines came over to my house
one evening with their STs and their Mac-Cartridges, and we systematically
tried my entire software collection (over 100 programs, public domain
and otherwise) . LESS THAT 5% OF IT RAN!
These friends, who had been chiding me continuously for the past few
weeks that their ataris "would be a mac for $100's less, and faster too"
quickly changed their tune after actually testing the product.
Which brings up a very important point. If you haven't used a program
then don't spend the UseNet's money telling me what it will do, and that
it's a great program and will make other things worthless, etc. etc.
You are welcome to announce that "I've just heard of something interesting,
and the marketing folks _claim_ that it will do this--looks like it's
worth checking out". That's fine, if not welcomed. But don't waste
my time and other people's money making claims that you know nothing
about.
Unfortunately, I've noticed this phenomenon occuring a lot more in people
who are Atari fanatics. I trust that this is just a statistical anomoly...
So, if you want a Mac, buy a Mac. If you want something else, then don't
get a mac, get that something else. But don't be fooled into thinking
that you can get a mac w/out getting a mac...
Peter "try it before you preach about it" Korn
-----
Peter "Arrgh" Korn Hacker? Me? A hacker? No, actually
ko...@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU I'm a mac-er. All's we do is
{decvax,dual,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses}!ucbvax!korn make library calls.
sc...@tg.uucp
> . . . <Much Deleted> . . . I won't
>say anything about CP/M in general being a single-user clone of TOPS-10...
>With a mind for ancient history,
> andy
I thought that CP/M was a clone of RSX-11!
At least it seemed like the RSX-11 I used to use on an
LSI 11/03. <So much for the gool ol' days! ;-)>
Scott Barman
philabs!tg!scott
Mike Meyer
>re-uses it rather than re-write it.
>Tim Smith USENET: sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim Compuserve: 72257,3706
Of course, a SMART programmer (as opposed to merely sane) re-uses the
stuff from PD source code. That way, you don't even write it once.
With a tip of the hat and many thanx to Fred Fish and the people who
provided the code on the first few Fish disks,
<mike
andr...@uoregon.uucp
but I get a bit tired of hearing things like:
In article <19...@alvin.mcnc.UUCP> ra...@alvin.UUCP (Ravi Subrahmanyan) writes:
> Dave's one ironclad point. The Amiga's multitasking *is*
>great. However, I look upon this as a difference in the machine's
>characters, not an issue for mudslinging.
It may surprise many people to learn this, but the ST operating system
handles a sort of multitasking very well. It has to be written into
the software, but I personally prefer it that way (I am saddened every
time I see how slow this VAX is even when I'm the only user logged on,
thanks to the multitasking ovrhead). One of my roommates is a
developer for the ST and has nearly completed a whole line of desk
acceessories that multitask beautifully. As I understand it, the same
thing is possible with TOS applications, though a bit trickier.
So while I admit that, for most consumers' purposes, there are not
multitasking applications available for the ST, I stolidly assert that
the machine does support it very nicely, so a programmer/developer who
wants multitasking capability shouldn't look elsewhere so quickly.
> I imagine everyone is sick of this debate, so why doesn't
>someone direct followups to the place it all started (now that I've
>got my two bits in)?
>
Ditto.
Cygnus.
Eric Swanson
c/o andr...@drizzle.uucp
P.O. Box 30098
Eugene, OR 97403
(503) 484-2790 or
(503) 484-4184
Mike Meyer
>then it would be possible to decide which computers have them. One
>OS textbook I saw defined an operating system as the software that
>takes control when a user program makes an error, but that definition
>seems kind of worthless.
>--
>Tim Smith USENET: sdcrdcf!ism780c!tim Compuserve: 72257,3706
> Delphi or GEnie: mnementh
I answered Tim's questions about AmigaDOS by mail. I suggest that
others move MCIBTYC discussions to private mail also.
Meanwhile, I wanna talk about what an operating system is. The
definition I've been using for the past few years is simple:
An operating system allocates and protects the resources
of the computer.
If it doesn't do at least those two things, then it hardly qualifies
as an OS. On the other hand, anything and everything outside of that
can theoretically be handled by user code. That's now the default for
command processors, even though they used to be hardwired into the OS.
File servers are moving into user space now, and I expect user-space
file servers to become as standard as user-space command processors.
The program loader type "operating systems"s don't really qualify;
they take a program and say: "Here, do what you want with the whole
machine." Unix is at the other end of the spectrum, and you have to
ask it for EVERYTHING. Memory, access to disk space, whatever.
AmigaDOS is somewhere in between, as it doesn't protect things, but
does try to allocate them (your program is considered buggy if you
don't tell the OS everything you're playing with). [Oh, yeah - just
for AmigaDOS bashers: notice that Tripos has full memory and device
protection in its original environment. I expect it got lost on the
original port to the 68K, not in the port to the Amiga.]
Ok, so I defined a spectrum that takes you from non-OS's (like CP/M)
to "real" OS/s (like Unix (cough, cough)). Where does *your* operating
system fit? And be sure to include "protecting and allocating" the CPU
as part of that. Single-tasking systems just give the CPU to a program
until they're through. Multitasking systems treat it as just another
serially reusable resource, and try and schedule things so that
everybody get some (with multi-processor boxes - like my current
monkey - this is even more so).
Waxing sillyphosical,
<mike
Mike Meyer
In article <2...@gssc.UUCP> j...@gssc.UUCP (John D. Miller) writes:
>ok, enough of this crap about which is better: the amiga, mac, or atari.
>they're all toys!!
That's MICROtoys to you, BOZO!
>*real* disk drives. i mean, what good is a little three and a half inch
>jobbie compared to my 12-platter rm-05's?
They're reliable? RM05'S! Gag me with a fork. I don't even put those
on my network switches. They all get BIG disks. None of this silly
little RM05 stuff.
>i had brought some "real" software over to test this thing - you know, fire up
>a couple makes an troff jobs and see what happens - but it seems that he didn't
>have no nine-track for his little pee-cee. hrmph.
What's this sillyness about tape drives? REAL computers don't do IO!
That's what VAXen and other little boxes are for; so they can talk to
the hyperchannel that talks to the I/O processor on real computers.
I/O that happens at less than a hundred megabytes a second just ain't
worth foolin' with for a real computer.
>you can still dial-up to a real computer and do some real work, i suppose,
No, I dial up to bigger toy computers (VAX 8800's, nowadays) and read
mail and occasionally typeset something. REAL computers don't have
dialin lines.
>well, now wait a sec - you can use it as a typewriter. yeah, that's it. that's
>the ticket. a $2000 typewriter!! you're all set!! i *knew* there was a
>reason you had to have that thing. add a few bucks more for a cuisenart word
>processor and you've got it!!
Naw, for a typewritter, you need something that's almost worth
noticing. I use an IBM 3090/200 (a Sierra, if ya know what I mean).
> >-- jdm
"My other computer is a CRAY." (x/mp-14, SN #301, to be exact)
(It says so, right here on my Amiga!)
m...@lynx.berkeley.edu
Joe Bob Hacker
Just in case it's not obvious:
:-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-)
jimo...@lsuc.uucp
Pete Korn's point about Magic Sac only running 5% of Mac software may
be right. I don't know. All I know is that I've seen it run Excell, Macpaint
and one of the top Mac word processing packages (and a handful of other
things). I knew well that it didn't run everything, but frankly I'm not
that worried. It seems to run the majority of the most important programs.
As far as I know, D. Small is still working to make improvements to improve
the emulation. So far, what it really shows me is that the Mac programmers
don't seem to write very good programs. If Apple brings out a new Mac with
improved resolutions, the same problem programs will likely not work on
it either.
I haven't bought Magic Sac myself. I have no use for it. Nor do I
bother with the CP/M emulator (which I *would* have use for--having much
CP/M software). There's quite enough good software for the Atari ST already
and more will be available as time goes on.
Cheers! -- Jim O.
eri...@uiucdcsp.uucp
Just a quick question for you Amiga multi-taksers:
How can you ensure safe multi-tasking with out an MMU?
It would seem that any program could write abitrarily into any
other program's memory - thus causing obvious problems. Is there
protection against such on the Amiga, or was the initial poster right
in that the *program* must insure compatiblity with multi-tasking by
asking the system for memory or something?
Just curious,
Stu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OOOO || ||
OOoOoOO .o .----^^-----^^-----.
oOOOOOoOO //| |Please pardon the |
OOoOO-OO _/| | |stray characters. |
oOOoO _/\/ | |New ".signature" |
O.o _/\_/ | |under construction|
o_\ _/\_/ | `------------------'
|| _/\_/ | Stuart Ericson
.-||---^--^. | {ihnp4,convex,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!ericson
| `' |____| ./|\.
| | ./a# 3x\. \sdlflskl\s|||`'.
`---.__.---' \/ d \/ |>/,|D>}{##53p]/>$GFOej\ /
.====;;====. i4saspo dsldoiaf iakeljkhar874h34i7rk43
(~~~~~~~~~~~~) djk49l;348\{].xslkjd939387;ld\:D}+W#)||---3..
~~~~~~~~~~~~
u...@psuvm.bitnet.uucp
Someone asks, "I'm curious. Just how great is multi-tasking?"
Now I am no wizard, but isn't the real beauty of multi-taksing a lot more
than just being able to print in the background. For example, device drivers,
print spoolers, communication programs, fast database systems, and a lotta
other keen stuff are much easier to develop and debug if they can be
implemented as a bunch of simultaneously runnig tasks on a multi-tasking
machine.
In other words, if 6 chimpanzees, programming at random, work on a
mu;titasking system they will produce all the worlds great programs
a lot faster than if they were working in MSDOS. 8-)
Hey--I could be wrong.
jtr...@umich.uucp
But RT-11 does not port well off the PDP-11 family (even if you could get
permission to try) and has advanced features not suited to 'the common
denominator'. That is RT-11 supports more that the worst possible functioning
system available, unlike CP/M.
Of course, most of the Z80 systems were that common denom. The pity, is that
CP/M86 and CP/M68K inherited those short comings.
--j.a.tainter
jtr...@umich.uucp
> Yea, and the amiga can be turned into an IBM. I have seen an ST emulator
> on the Amiga also, but never say it work. A c64 emulator also exists,
> and there are constant rumors of a Mac emulator. But, notice that no
> one is emulating the Amiga. Two possibilities:
> 1.) The Amiga is failing, naw, to much loyalty, and commodore stock
> continues to rise.
> 2.) The Amiga is truly a cut above, or state of the art, and can't be
> emulated by the more primitive hardware and OSes.
> Ross Miller
--j.a.tainter
rad...@calgary.uucp
operating system is silly. Virtually every computer has an operating
system; some have better operating systems than others.
An operating system is just what it says: the system that lets the
computer be operated. It consists of all the software required for
basic operation of the computer in its intended environment.
Those people who say that the Atari, say, doesn't have an operating
system really mean they don't like its operating system. Usually,
they mean they don't like its lack of multi-tasking. OK, that's fine.
Don't use it. But don't make silly definitions of "operating system" that
just show how narrow your view of computers is.
Radford Neal
ste...@videovax.uucp
definition of the term "operating system," along with other questions:
John J. Donovan's definition of an operating system is:
An operating system is concerned with the allocation of resources
and services, such as memory, processors, devices, and information.
The operating system correspondingly includes programs to manage
these resources, such as a _traffic controller_, a _scheduler_,
_memory management module_, _I/O programs_, and a _file system_.
_Systems Programming_, McGraw-Hill,
New York (1972), p. 15
(emphasis in the original)
> . . .
> If I am running Switcher or Servant on a Mac, then I may have
> multiple programs loaded. Context is switched by explicit action
> on my part, while, say, on my UNIX system, it can also be
> switched by explicit action on the part of the clock. I don't
> see an essential difference as far as the operating-systemness of
> either system goes.
The purpose of an operating system is to manage the machine's resources,
making most efficient use of them without human intervention. In this
case, you are playing the role of "traffic controller." Because you do
not have full knowledge of the internal state of the machine at any given
time (and because humans act on a timescale far longer than that of the
computer), you cannot manage the system resources on a millisecond-by-
millisecond basis. According to Donovan, this is a function of the
operating system, so in this case the Mac is deficient.
Steve Rice
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
{decvax | hplabs | ihnp4 | uw-beaver}!tektronix!videovax!stever
es...@well.uucp
Do we all have to wade through ANOTHER long series of messages about
A being better than C being better than B. Come on! Not AGAIN!!!
(espen@well)
l...@apple.uucp
>voluntarily give up its control of the cpu (by calling SystemTask, I think it
>is)*, with windows the mac doesn't store what's obscured when a window goes
>on top of another window. Therefore the user program must store this at all
>times, because it is wiped out before the user program gets notified that the
>window has been obscured. Then the user program must redraw the contents of
>the window that was obscured when the window is brought to front again.
>
It is possible to have the system remember the contents of a window and
refresh it automatically. Most applications don't do this because the data
needed to refresh the window is readily available, and it is easy to just
redraw it as necessary. If your application had multiple disk-based
documents open at once, you might prefer to have the system do the refresh,
since that might avoid disk acesses needed to bring the data back into
memory.
>Therefore I think it is a gross understatement to say that the Amiga merely
>performs these functions automatically rather than the user program having
>to do it itself. The Amiga supports windows completely and the Mac does not.
>On the Amiga, for example, you can draw into a backgrounded window, one of
>the fundamental things you might want to do with a window.
>
You can draw into a background Macintosh window as well. The system handles
all the clipping for you.
As far as I can tell, programming the 2 machines is equally difficult (or
easy). The Macintosh has built in text editing primitives and a wider
variety of graphics primitives, but the Amiga handles resizing, moving, and
updating windows automatically.
--
Larry Rosenstein
Object Specialist
Apple Computer
AppleLink: Rosenstein1
UUCP: {sun, voder, nsc, mtxinu, dual}!apple!lsr
CSNET: l...@Apple.CSNET
j...@bnl.uucp
> definition I've been using for the past few years is simple:
>
> An operating system allocates and protects the resources
> of the computer.
Good definition, but somewhat limiting for most microcomputers because the
hardware just isn't there to protect resources. I would expand the
definition to include those systems that allocate and protect resources to
the best ability of the underlying hardware. For example, MSDOS is about as
good an an OS as you can get on a 8088 (ever try 8088 UNIX? I'd call it a
bad joke rather than an OS).
--
John McNamee j...@BNL.ARPA decvax!philabs!sbcs!bnl!jpm
"Timesharing is the use of many people by a computer"
r...@rayssdb.uucp
As I remember the story....
IBM originally contacted Digital Research with the intent to use
CPM in thier PC's. However, Digital Research required a VERY STEEP
licensing fee, So IBM went elsewhere!
Enter MicroSoft, who realized that if IBM's PC took-off (could any-
thing with the IBM name floop??) they would be assured of a continued
demand for MS-DOS for many years to come!! This , coupled with thier
already popular MS-BASIC, proved to be Microsoft's best move ever.
hade...@husc4.uucp
Sorry to carry on this Mac vs. Amiga comparison, but it
can sometimes be instructive.
In <52...@ism780c.UUCP> t...@ism780c.UUCP (Tim Smith) asks:
> [ comments about Mac Servant and Switcher ]
>Also, I thought that the Amiga only switched tasks when the currently
>executing task does something that would block ( IO, or something like
>the UNIX sleep or pause system calls )? Is this so?
No, the Amiga switches tasks every few milliseconds or so.
A task gets the processor only if it is not in the Wait() state,
however, so if a task is just sitting there waiting for input,
it does not take up any processor time. When the operating system
gets a signal (such as in input event for the task, or whatever),
it will wake up the task and tell it that an event has occurred.
This is very different from the typical Mac program which sits
there and loops until an event occurs.
For example, on the Amiga, even when there is only one user
program running, there are many tasks running. There is the task
that takes care of the disk drive, the task taking care of input
events, the Intuition granddaddy task, and so forth. (In fact,
on the Amiga the OS is just a task, a task that runs at a VERY high
priority and sleeps most of the time, waiting for input events.
This is different from the UNIX OS which has a magic supervisor
that takes care of system stuff.) Though there are many tasks in
the system, in general they are all in the Wait() state until the
user program or the user asks them to do something. For example,
when the program asks for a read or write on the disk, that request
is processed in a multitasking mode (i.e., the program can go do
other things while waiting for the disk.)
The Amiga has very fast context switching, since the
whole OS is designed for multitasking performance. On the Mac,
since the OS is not designed for multitasking, a context switch has
to save a whole lot of information; thus Switcher only does a context
switch when you ask it to do so, not automatically all the time
as the Amiga Exec does. Thus using Switcher it is impossible to
have two programs actually doing something at the same time,
whereas on the Amiga this is trivial. On the other hand, Switcher
does provide 75% of the functionality of multitasking, which is
quick switching between multiple programs all loaded at once.
For example, when I am using my Amiga the thing I do most often is
switch back to my CLI window to do some disk operations while I'm
running my editor or vt100 emulator or whatever. This does not
really require multitasking, except when I am downloading I can
still do it on an Amiga but not on a Mac. Also since the OS
is always there as a task, even if the program is off doing some complicated
thing, I can still front/back my windows, switch to a different screen,
etc., much more rapidly on an Amiga than on a Mac.
Servant was designed to support true context switching
through what is called a "Servant task". Unfortunately there
are almost no programs which run as "Servant tasks," so this is
rather moot. I am told that Hertzfeld considered trying to
implement true multitasking for regular Mac programs, but gave
up when he realized that to do real-time context switching would
slow down programs by an unacceptably huge factor (since you
have to save almost all of the machine's state, rather than just
the registers, as you would in a true multitasking environment.)
It may be that more and more programs will be compiled to run as
"Servant tasks" in which case the Mac will slowly become a multitasking
machine. The Amiga has been multitasking from day one.
The Amiga Exec is designed in a very beautiful way.
The library system, etc. have been designed for both elegance
and speed, as well as extensibility and backward-compatibility.
The only real dog in the Amiga OS is the DOS, which was written
by non-Amiga people, and thus is a total dog. It runs OK, but
sort of breaks all of the OS rules, but it IS a multitasking DOS,
so it does file locking and that sort of stuff. It works, but
I wish it were as elegant and powerful as the rest of the Amiga OS.
(Thanks Carl Sassenrath, RJ Mical, Jim Mackraz, etc., etc., etc.)
One thing I have noticed is that the Amiga windowing
system is lightning fast, in comparison with something like
Suntools on the Sun. I mean Suntools practically rolled over
and died while I was running a simple fractal generation program.
I mean this is on a SUN/3, which has "real" hard disk drives,
costs $30K, and two 68020s running at 14 Mhz to bench in at about
1 1/2 times faster than a VAX 11/785. Just trying to resize a
window under Suntools became a monumental task, and the whole
system hung when I tried to rewind the tape drive (it came back
when the tape drive finished rewinding, and then proceeded to
try to take care of all the mouse clicks and stuff I had been
doing while it was dead, all at once. Ugh.) I mean, which is
the REAL OS here, Amiga Exec/Intuition/DOS or the Suntools/UNIX?
-Mitsu
j...@rayssd.uucp
> Pete Korn's point about Magic Sac only running 5% of Mac software may
Jim, are you implying that of all the wonderful Mac software that we hear
Mac users boasting about constantly, that only 5% of it is made up of
important programs? Hmmm... :-)
/^^^/
/ _/__________________________________________________
/ !/ Jeffrey Jay Clesius !\
/ / Raytheon Submarine Signal Division !_\ /^^^/
/ /! 1847 West Main Road, Mail Stop 188 !/ /
^^^^ ! Portsmouth, RI 02871-1087 (401) 847-8000 (X4015) / /
! {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus} rayssd!jxc /! /
!____________________________________________________/_! /
/ /
^^^^
rob...@sri-spam.uucp
>
> One thing I have noticed is that the Amiga windowing
>system is lightning fast, in comparison with something like
>Suntools on the Sun. I mean Suntools practically rolled over
>and died while I was running a simple fractal generation program.
>I mean this is on a SUN/3, which has "real" hard disk drives,
>costs $30K, and two 68020s running at 14 Mhz to bench in at about
>1 1/2 times faster than a VAX 11/785. Just trying to resize a
>window under Suntools became a monumental task, and the whole
>system hung when I tried to rewind the tape drive (it came back
>when the tape drive finished rewinding, and then proceeded to
>try to take care of all the mouse clicks and stuff I had been
>doing while it was dead, all at once. Ugh.)
I know this isn't comp.sys.suns so I'll limit my comments on this;
The tape drive problem you describe is dependant on the
tape controller card in use (I think you have the SCSI),
but is not really the fault of the computer per se.
Also, "two 68020's"? Isn't there only just one, on the
CPU card? Reply by mail if you want to.
I do agree that there is a problem with window command queueing under
Suntools. Does the Amiga have any problems in this area? Do you
get instant response to the mouse? In other words, does the mouse
have the highest priority?
As for fractal generation on a Sun 3, did you use SunView? If you did
then that was probably a big % of your problem.
Robert Allen,
rob...@spam.istc.sri.com
kei...@cadovax.uucp
>
>In article <6...@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ra...@ATRP.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Amiga-Man) writes:
>> ... [talks about advantages of Amiga]
>>- A true multitasking OS. I find this feature very important.
>
> I'm really curious: just how great is multitasking? I.e., how much do
>you, the typical Amiga owners, use this feature? Even on Unix I find that the
>only thing I consistently use '&' for is printing, and on my ST I have a wide
>range of print spoolers to choose from.
I use it frequently when I'm telecommunicating. Uploading and Downloading of
software is a relatively boring and time consuming event. While my terminal
emulator is doing this, I'm off in another window working on something else.
As long as I'm not doing down and dirty debugging of new software that is
prone to crash the machine, It works pretty good, and I do this quite often.
Other things that are handy, are formatting disks in background while tele-
communicating, loading up ram disks, etc. I'm spoiled now, and wouldn't want
to do without it.
>cycle, the speed of Megamax compile-time, coupled with a RAMdisk, makes multi-
>tasking a 'yeah it would be nice, but not utterly world-stopping' luxury.
Well, it's not world-stopping, but I sure miss it when I'm on a machine that
dosen't have it.
>and is it worth the slow-down in execution? Even though I would really _like_
>it, would I really use it that much?
As Matt mentioned, there is not that much slowdown, many programs spend an
awful lot of time doing nothing, or waiting for something to happen, which
dosen't take up any CPU at all.
Keith Doyle
# {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithd
# cadovax!kei...@ucla-locus.arpa
wo...@tybalt.caltech.edu.uucp
One advantage of the Mac over the Amiga: It certainly is a lot cuter
sitting on my little dorm desk than a big, clunky Amiga would be. But
I suppose that only applys for college students who move somewhere
else every nine months or so, and who likes to take his computer
when he travels (and tries to travel light, too!)
Of course friends of mine complain when they try to use my Mac: they
hate squinting at the little screen...
- William Woody Mac! > ][n && /|\
wo...@tybalt.caltech.edu
wo...@juliet.caltech.edu
grun...@husc4.uucp
>Jim Omura writes:
>> Pete Korn's point about Magic Sac only running 5% of Mac software may
>> be right. ... It seems to run the majority of the most important programs.
>
>Jim, are you implying that of all the wonderful Mac software that we hear
>Mac users boasting about constantly, that only 5% of it is made up of
>important programs? Hmmm... :-)
> ! {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus} rayssd!jxc
My estimate would probably be more like 1%.
gru...@husc4.UUCP
OR
{ seismo | rutgers | decvax!ihnp4 } !husc6!husc4!grunau
mu...@amdahl.uucp
writes:
> (could any-
> thing with the IBM name flop??)
This is a joke, right?
Things with the IBM name flop all the time. Look at the PC Portable (IBM's
answer to Compaq) or the PC Jr (who could forget that?).
And don't forget about the 8100.
--
John A. Muth ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun,nsc}!amdahl!muth
ciar...@rochester.uucp
>definition I've been using for the past few years is simple:
>
> An operating system allocates and protects the resources
> of the computer.
>
>as an OS. On the other hand, anything and everything outside of that
>can theoretically be handled by user code.
I'm afraid I must disagree with your definition and examples.
First let me say where I'm coming from. I started working with
computers about 20 years ago, when operating systems were generally
much more primitive than they are today. I have worked with machines
from micro to mainframe, with a variety of OS's. I think Meyer's
problem comes from not taking a broad enough view, i.e. assuming
that the only "real" operating systems are those with the features
of today's OS's.
For me, the main purpose of an OS has always been to hide the details
of the hardware from the user software. Remember that not all machines
have things like "user space", "reserved instructions", and other
things that try to keep the user from getting at the shared
resources. Rather, they could tickle the hardware if they wanted
to; the point of the OS is so they don't have to!
So, the OS contains code for the file system, as well as the drivers
for the disk, printer, terminals, etc. (of course, many micros
now have the drivers in ROM, and the OS just calls them).
Still, the point is that the user can just ask the OS to give
him/her the next keystroke, or send this character to the
printer, and doesn't care about the device address, status signals,
and so on.
If you programmed micros (in assembly language) in the mid-1970's
(or minis ten years before), you know what a pain it was
writing programs before operating systems like CP/M, RDOS,
VORTEX, or RT-11 came along. The program had to have the
drivers hard-coded into it, which made it very non-portable between
different machines. With CP/M you could write a program that
would run on ANY 8080 or Z-80 machine regardless of whether it
had floppies, hard disk, separate terminal, built-in video and keyboard,
serial or parallel printer, etc. CP/M hid all the differences.
An OS such as MP/M (the multi-tasking version of CP/M) also let
you address your own terminal as if it were the only one, and then
each user who ran the program would have I/O directed to the
appropriate terminal.
>That's now the default for
>command processors, even though they used to be hardwired into the OS.
>File servers are moving into user space now, and I expect user-space
>file servers to become as standard as user-space command processors.
In that case they won't be very standard. User-changeable command processors
are still very much the exception rather than the rule. Unix was the
first widely-used OS to offer this feature, and it was considered
quite a breakthrough in the mid-1970's. Now you can get them for
IBM PC-DOS (MS-DOS), AmigaDos, and a few others, but no way can you
get them (to the best of my knowledge) on MVS, DOS/370, VM/370,
Primos, VMS, RSTS, or any of the other major mainframe or mini OS's.
>The program loader type "operating systems"s don't really qualify;
>they take a program and say: "Here, do what you want with the whole
>machine." Unix is at the other end of the spectrum, and you have to
>ask it for EVERYTHING. Memory, access to disk space, whatever.
As I mentioned, you do have to ask CP/M for disk space (unless you
want to risk corrupting the disk, which the hardware physically can't
prevent you from doing). On the other hand, until very
recently Unix didn't even have file locking to prevent
simultaneous access to files. It had to be handled by user code!
MP/M had it on the 8080 microprocessor 8 years ago.
On a single-tasking system, especially one without memory-mapping
hardware, there are a lot fewer resources to manage.
The processor, memory, the printer, etc. are not "shared".
On a multi-tasking system, it is appropriate to have this
resource allocation handled by a central authority, i.e. the OS.
Just because the simple system didn't need these features
doesn't mean it is not an operating system.
Also, the utilities that come with an OS (assembler, debugger,
linker, command line interpreter, file copier, disk formatter, etc.)
are traditionally considered part of the OS, just not part of
the Kernel. The Kernel includes the resource allocator, dispatcher,
program loader, file system, and so on, i.e. the stuff that stays in
memory.
In conclusion, an OS provides many functions, including:
Shared resource allocation.
Hiding the hardware details.
Processing user commands.
Loading programs.
Not having all of these does not automatically make something
not an operating system.
I welcome comments on this.
Mike Ciaraldi
uucp: seismo!rochester!ciaraldi
ARPA: ciaraldi@rochester
611...@pucc.bitnet
>
>Just a quick question for you Amiga multi-taksers:
>
>How can you ensure safe multi-tasking with out an MMU?
>It would seem that any program could write abitrarily into any
>other program's memory - thus causing obvious problems.
netnews software says (because I don't read comp.sys.amiga) that this
was ONLY posted to comp.sys.mac. Does this make a lot of sense to YOU?
Hmmmmm....
Peter Wisnovsky
Virtual Address: UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!611...@pucc.bitnet
bro...@watdcsu.uucp
> ... if IBM's PC took-off (could any-
> thing with the IBM name flop??)
The answer, of course, is "yes". IBM's first micro flopped badly (the 5100,
which came complete with APL and BASIC). So did the PCjr. For that matter,
whatever happened to the XT/370 (CMS on a micro)? As far as I know, it
flopped too.
The PC succeeded partly because of IBM's name, but also because of a few
surprisingly astute decisions on IBM's part (an open architecture being
the main one).
seb...@ihlpa.uucp
> >Mac users boasting about constantly, that only 5% of it is made up of
> >important programs? Hmmm... :-)
> . . .
>
[bigger/meaner/better/faster/more lovable] than yours" crap. Could all
of you little boys and girls please go outside and play, and let the
rest of us get some serious work done here. I have a Macintosh, and I
wouldn't have anything else. *You* have an Amiga/Atari/whatever and
wouldn't have anything else. Fine. Variety is the spice of life and
all that stuff... I remember sometime back when the Motorola vs. Intel
wars were raging in these sectors and someone suggested the formation of
a new newsgroup, net.stupid.penislength or something. Such a group,
should it exist (regretably, it does not) would be the perfect place for
this current nonsense. ENOUGH, PLEASE!!
(*Whew*, just had to get that off my chest...)
Steve Bruun
AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
ihnp4!ihlpa!sebruun
jtr...@umich.uucp
> > Pete Korn's point about Magic Sac only running 5% of Mac software may
> > be right. ... It seems to run the majority of the most important programs.
> Jim, are you implying that of all the wonderful Mac software that we hear
> Mac users boasting about constantly, that only 5% of it is made up of
> important programs? Hmmm... :-)
--j.a.tainter
cra...@kontron.uucp
And the 4" microfloppy standard that IBM adopted -- then quietly dropped
when everyone adopted the Sony 3.5" microfloppy standard.
IBM is NOT 10' tall -- their success is at least partly the quality of
their manufactured products and documentation. If they were a small
company producing what they have produced, they would become a big company
eventually.
Clayton E. Cramer
daf...@watdragon.uucp
I attended a talk given by the guy who wrote the original MS-DOS. He was
working for his company "Seattly computer", I believe. MicroSoft contacted
him when they had IBM on the line. His firm worked as a sub-contracter
and did not know about IBM until one day they received a call from someone
at big blue who needed some technical answers.
When DRI was contacted by IBM, they apparently blew it by not being friendly
about making changes to CP/M86. They basically said "that's the way it is,
take it or leave it."
MicroSoft eventually bought the company/product/author to get everything
in house.
I heard an interesting comment about MicroSoft from one of their former
product managers...."It's a nice place to work. You can work any 80 hours
a week that you like".
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel A. Ford daf...@watdragon.uucp
CS Department daford%watd...@waterloo.csnet
U. of Waterloo daford%watdragon%waterlo...@csnet-relay.arpa
a...@navajo.uucp
>Just a quick question for you Amiga multi-taskers:
>How can you ensure safe multi-tasking with out an MMU?
>It would seem that any program could write abitrarily into any
>other program's memory - thus causing obvious problems. Is there
>protection against such on the Amiga, or was the initial poster right
>in that the *program* must insure compatiblity with multi-tasking by
>asking the system for memory or something?
>Just curious,
>Stu
Oh, yes, you're right in saying that any program could write
arbitrary stuff on top of any other program. But it's no problem at all
assuring this. Program written for nonmultitasking systems do not go
out and write things in random memory, right? Same here.
The main thing to watch out for when programming the Amiga is making
sure you check that your calls to the OS succeed. The OS is responsible for
maintanence of the resources such as sound channels, memory, I/O ports,
blitter, file accesses, etc. Thus, when call a function such as OpenWindow(),
you should make sure that what it returns is not NULL. That's it! That's
all you have to do, in almost all cases. If you get back NULL, it
probably means the OS could not obtain enough memory for your window.
Same with other resources. Some program is hogging the 6 of the 8 sprites,
and you need 4. So you ask the OS for 4 sprites, and you get back NULL.
At that point you should put up a nice little requester and say you can't
go on, or you should try to use some other method, like using "virtual"
sprites, of which you can have many. If you try to go on assuming you got
the sprites, who knows what might happen. But of course, at that point, it
would be all your fault.
(Actually, the OS is fairly nice when it comes to managing the resources.
For example, it caches the fonts/libraries etc once it reads them in, and
then keeps a "usecount" for every task that is accessing that resource.
Even if the usecount falls to zero, the resource is not flushed out of
memory, unless it is changed on disk or the OS runs out of memory...)
Of course, giving each task its own address space is more important on a
multiuser system than on a single user system like the Amiga. In fact, on the
Amiga, having a single address space might actually be a better solution
as it allows messages to be passed around by reference --- It is not
necessary to duplicate the whole message whenever you send it to someone.
This is a serious efficiency issue as the Amiga operating system relies on
message passing for many of its activities.
Anyway, to get back to your original questions, YES, programs must
be careful that they do not go write over other tasks, but NO, this is
presents ne extra work to the programmer except to make sure his/her calls
to the OS succeed. As far as HLL constructs such as malloc() in C or
new() in Pascal go, well, then you really do not have to worry about it
cause the HLL runtime system better be asking the OS for chunks of memory
as you use it up.
Hope that answered your question!
Ali Ozer, a...@navajo.stanford.edu
ps. And by the way, I love that "temporary" .signature.
po...@hoptoad.uucp
MS-DOS was orginally "86-DOS" by Seattle Computer Products, Inc.
MicroSoft licensed it from them.
86-DOS was simular to CP/M but had some major advantages. There was
(and still is) a programme called COMMAND. There was much better file
managment. SCP had/has a "I/O divice handler" which could add devices on the
fly. A far step ahead of CP/M.
86-DOS had (with v 0.3) only 42 functions. Most were compatible with
CP/M. Directories were not available, and looking at the manual, neither
were User Areas (ala CP/M 2.2).
I think I heard that SCP sued Microsoft to recover the rights?
Does any one remember what happend?
--
Tim Pozar
UUCP po...@hoptoad.UUCP
Fido 125/406
USNail KLOK-FM
77 Maiden Lane
San Francisco CA 94108
terrorist cryptography DES drugs cipher secret decode NSA CIA NRO IRS
coke crack pot LSD russian missile atom nuclear assassinate libyan RSA
(Thanks to Robert Bickford for the suggestion for the NSA line eater)
dil...@cory.berkeley.edu.uucp
>
>How can you ensure safe multi-tasking with out an MMU?
>
>It would seem that any program could write abitrarily into any
>other program's memory - thus causing obvious problems. Is there
>protection against such on the Amiga, or was the initial poster right
>in that the *program* must insure compatiblity with multi-tasking by
>asking the system for memory or something?
>
>Just curious,
>Stu
Any program can write anywhere it wants... but I wouldn't advise it,
even on a Mac. The Amiga has no MMU. But then again, neither do many Xerox
machines and they multitask just fine. The whole point is that properly
working programs don't go wandering off through memory. In other words, you
can't ensure anything on an Amiga, or Mac, or Atari, or IBM, or any other
computer which doesn't put up firewalls between processes.
So in answer to your question: Compatibility has nothing to do with
it but YES, you must ask the system to allocate memory for you when you want
it. Keep in mind though that memory allocation on an Amiga is extremely
optimized and extremely quick. Also note that once you do allocate memory,
or create a custom screen etc... you can do whatever you want with it.
-Matt
da...@cbmvax.uucp
> Xref: cbmvax comp.sys.amiga:1618 comp.sys.mac:937 comp.sys.atari.st:1063
>
>
> In article <6...@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ra...@ATRP.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Amiga-Man) writes:
>> ... [talks about advantages of Amiga]
>>- A true multitasking OS. I find this feature very important.
>
> I'm really curious: just how great is multitasking? I.e., how much do
> you, the typical Amiga owners, use this feature? Even on Unix I find that the
> only thing I consistently use '&' for is printing, and on my ST I have a wide
>
> I _DO_ envy your multitasking! I'm just curious how useful it
> actually is. I.e., is it that necessary in a personal computer,
> and is it worth the slow-down in execution? Even though I would really _like_
> it, would I really use it that much?
>
Well, first of all, even if you never experience a need for multitasking,
you get two things from it. First of all, the Operating System uses it.
System devices, like disk driver, have a server task that operates them.
The DOS will generally send messages to these tasks, which then "take it
from there", often asynchronously. The nice thing about this is that a
calling program isn't required to wait for the disk operation to finish
before going on. Disk I/O is mostly waiting for the heads to move, so
as a background task you use very little CPU time on disk access (on the
Amiga, the floppy reads and writes are done by a custom chip during an
interlaced DMA slot, so you have even more CPU time available. But on
any machine this can be a big win). The multitasking system lets you very
easily take advantage of CPU time that would otherwise be wasted in some
kind of a wait loop. Another example of system multitasking is Intuition,
the graphic interface manager on the Amiga. Intuition exists as a high
priority background task. It monitors input events, like keyboard or
mouse actions. Programs send messages to Intuition, asking for any
events Intuition has noticed; Intuition tells each program about only
those events its specifically concerned about. As a separate task,
Intuition will never miss mouse movements or key strokes, while in a single
tasking system you can very easily miss such things, or slow your
program down trying not to miss any. Also, the Intuition process as a
high level I/O server makes alot of sense when you consider that several
different tasks may all be asking about these events. Since Intuition
is there, no task need know about any other running with it.
Now there's the multitasking I use myself, out of choice versus system
design. Truthfully, I use multitasking on the Amiga much more than on
UNIX, mainly because the windowing/screening capabilities of the Amiga
let me run simultaneous interactive things much better than I can on
normal UNIX (may X-Windows on a UNIX system will change this). I do the
same amount of multitasking on the Apollo workstations I use here, for
basically the same reasons; the windowing. To start off, I usually run
a few background tasks, the print server, PopCLI (a new CLI window at the
touch of a key, just like on the Apollo), and Emacs if I'm on a machine
with enough memory. I can start up Kermit and download from our VAX,
click that screen to the back (it keeps running, of course), and edit
or compile something while the download is taking place. The ability
to multitask also completely eliminates the need for specially written
"desk accessory" or "RAM resident" programs, since any number of
programs can run together or stick around in memory; none of them have
to obey any special constraints. And the result is much greater
efficiency; instead of my application program having to poll the system
whenever possible to find any request for a desk accessory, my program
just does what I intend to do with it. And other tasks like WorkBench
or CLI can load an accessory program if I like.
And finally, individual programs can benefit from multitasking. First of
all, there's never any reason to kludge "DOS" type commands into a
program, since you can always fire up a CLI window to do the job the
right way. A program can implement things with tasks much more
efficiently and effectively than with standard polling methods. One
controlling task can operate with an arbitrary number of servent tasks
using "software buss" messing protocols. I think most folks feel
satisfied with single tasking because they've always done things that
way. The more you use a system that multitasks well, like the Amiga
(or an Apollo or Sun), the more you feel frustrated with the old
single tasking systems. At least, that's been my experience.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dave Haynie {caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh
"You can keep my things, they've come to take me home"
-Peter Gabriel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
da...@cbmvax.uucp
> ST's apparently start at about $500, and an Amiga can be
> put together for $900 or so (one drive, 256K and a TV for a monitor).
> Let's arbitrarily label the price range as $500-$1000 (I assume that
> minimal Mac's can be found in that price range, also). If you can
> build a system that runs Pick-Axe for < $1000, then there's a second
> system with a real OS, even by strict definitions (well, I do know
> people who don't consider variations on Sys III & V as real OS's, but
> we'll ignore them for now).
> <mike
I guess I'd have to agree on this one, OS-9 68K on an ST is certainly what
I consider a real OS (as opposed to program-loader/BIOS), and actually
from what I've seen of OS-9 it seem to fix quite a few things that UNIX
doesn't like about running in a small environment like a micro. Even
OS-9 Level II on a CoCo I'd have to conceed as a real OS. Is there one
for a Mac? The only problem with all of these is that they are add-ons,
not supplied by the vendors of the machines in question. Which means
that, for the most part, there will be little or no commercial support
for the real OS; everything will be written to run with the program
loader. Now if you could run TOS in a OS-9 window (port X-Windows or
something) on an ST, I might take a second look at the machine. A Sys
III or Sys V implementation would be real nice, providing you've got
hardware powerful enough to run it at any decent speed (like, an MMU
at least).
so...@drivax.uucp
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Page 1225
thier (has no entry!)
And so explains the validity of your "Minor historical point."
-----
P.S: No, I did not work for DRI at the time in question but for
Datapoint Corp. who by the way:
* invented of the intel 8008 instruction set (1969-70)
* built one of the first personal computers (Version 1 2200) in 1971
* designed a business language (databus) a predecessor to dbase (in 71)
* developed Datashare a system that time-shared 12 terminals by '73
(on a Datapoint Version 2 2200 with only 16K ram!) - and yes, its FAST!
* the inventors of ARCnet (in 1976 and still one of the fastest LAN's)
* a multitasking mutiprocessing networking O.S. in 1980 (ran on '286 in '85)
* a programming environment and language (DASL) that only now has competitors
* etc. but sadly for them, never labeled the machine a PC.
((Yes, they like other companies have made their mistakes.))
----
BTW if you are curious about DRI, just read the non-Microsoft press around you.
DRI already has:
* a real-time, multi-user, multi-tasking, networking O.S. for the 286
* executes most PC-DOS 2.1 applications unmodified (ex: 1-2-3)
* all PC-DOS commands (dir, copy, etc.) are there plus a unix sub-set
* this O.S. exists in 2 major IBM products!
* this pseudo-DOS 5.0 was here about 1 year ago. It even exists in IBM products!
* it was called Concurrent DOS 286, and has been enhanced and renamed FLEXOS 286
* FLEXOS 186 and FLEXOS 386 have been announced at BUSCON
->->-> Please stay tuned.
(No, you put-downers, I do not market, I programme!)
-----------
Disclaimer: I speak for myself and no others!
Henri Socha @UUCP: ....!amdhal!drivax!socha WAT iron'75
"Lawyers exist to divide the pie, Engineers to make it bigger!"
Approximate Engineer/Lawyer ratios: USA 1:400 & Japan 400:1 Explains a LOT!
--
UUCP:...!amdahl!drivax!socha WAT Iron'75
"Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler." A. Einstein
k...@argus.uucp
> Enter MicroSoft, who realized that if IBM's PC took-off (could any-
> thing with the IBM name floop??)
Can you say "IBM PCjr" ?
str...@ihlpf.uucp
> > thing with the IBM name flop??)
>
> answer to Compaq) or the PC Jr (who could forget that?).
Sure, IBM screws up with their products. Who ever said that IBM *ever*
has had state-of-the-art products? They *usually* succeed with their
sheer size and marketing prowess. Datamation once said (I qoute without the
source in front of me:) "Who else could have made the IBM PC a success?
The keyboard was laid out by either a drunk or a contortionist. ... ..."
I apologize for the above flaming (you probably know where my feelings
lie); perhaps we need a comp.ibm.rag_on newsgroup!
--
Rich Straka ihnp4!ihlpf!straka
str...@ihlpf.uucp
> Does any one remember what happend?
I *think* I heard that Microsoft settled out of court for what would
probably be considered a small amount of money (<$1M, I think).
--
Rich Straka ihnp4!ihlpf!straka
an...@thelink.uucp
rights to DOS to Microsoft on the condition that they would get perpetual
updates to newer versions and be able to license it's use. Microsoft never
did this with DOS 2.x or 3.x because, they claimed, it was a complete
rewrite and Seattle wasn't entitled to a license. I'm pretty sure the case
was settled: Microsoft paid Seattle Computer $900,000, and Seattle Computer
gave up all rights on DOS.
Andy Dustman (ihnp!alpha!ack!andy)
dvm...@cca.uucp
the Mac with swither, only one program is running at a time. You can't start
a program compile, and switch to another program and do something else in the
mean time. When you switch to another program, the other programs are not
running, just the one in front of you.
To illustrate this point even better, I have a friend that runs a BBS on his
Amiga, and while it is running, he can run a text editor to develop programs,
compile and link-edit them *while* the BBS is running, allowing some dialed-
in user to read the BBS mail, up/down-load programs, etc. This cannot be done
on a Mac or Atari-ST.
A question was raised about whether a compute-bound program can monopolize the
Amiga and take up all of the available CPU. Here's the story: there are 256
priorities for tasks in the Amiga OS. If a task is ready to run and there are
no other tasks at it's priority, it is just handed control and that is it. All
higher priority tasks must be in a wait state (or else they would be running,
instead of the job at the current priority). When there is an interrupt that
makes a higher priority job ready to run, the current job that is running is
stopped, and the higher priority job is given control at that point (basic
tricle-down dispatching).
Here is the good part: If a task is ready to run, and there are more than 1
task ready to run at its priority, the EXEC routines set a hardware timer to
interrupt in 64 milliseconds (that's about 1/15 of a second in case you don't
have your calculator handy) and then give the task control. If that task does
not give up control of the CPU in 64 ms, *BOOM* out he goes, and the next task
at that priority is given control the same way. Since all user tasks in the
Amiga run at the same priority, this effectively time-slices use of the CPU,
and things continue to run. (There is a new command in 1.2 AmigaDOS that
allows you to change priority, so you could, in 1.2, block other programs
with a compute-bound program, but its your own fault if you ask for it to be
done.)
The time-slicing that is described in the prior paragraph is very sophisticat-
ed, and is *not* done if only one task is running at a given priority, so
no overhead is incurred if only one thing at a time is runnable. The only
machine that I know of that uses this round-robin time-slicing method could be
effectively used as a boat anchor for the USS Nimitz (aircraft carrier). There
is certainly no micro that does this.
When the Mac and Atari-ST can do the above, drop me a line, and we'll talk
about multi-tasking operating systems.
cha...@eris.uucp
>> Meanwhile, I wanna talk about what an operating system is. The
>> definition I've been using for the past few years is simple:
>>
>> An operating system allocates and protects the resources
>> of the computer.
>
>hardware just isn't there to protect resources. I would expand the
>definition to include those systems that allocate and protect resources to
>the best ability of the underlying hardware. For example, MSDOS is about as
>good an an OS as you can get on a 8088 (ever try 8088 UNIX? I'd call it a
>bad joke rather than an OS).
I think y'all are missing Mike's point:
Most of these (so-called) microcomputer "operating systems" _AREN'T_ !!
Most microcomputer operating systems (including just about everything
but AmigaDOS, OS9, and UNIX/XENIX) are little more than overgrown subroutine
libraries...
Brent
--
Brent Chapman
cha...@eris.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!eris!chapman
f...@aero.uucp
...
>Damn, I'm really getting very, very tired of all this "My computer is
>[bigger/meaner/better/faster/more lovable] than yours" crap. Could all
>of you little boys and girls please go outside and play, and let the
>rest of us get some serious work done here. I have a Macintosh, and I
>wouldn't have anything else. *You* have an Amiga/Atari/whatever and
>wouldn't have anything else. Fine. Variety is the spice of life and
>all that stuff... I remember sometime back when the Motorola vs. Intel
which computer I thought best for my purposes was some of the discussion
of "My Computer is better than yours". Perhaps a news group
comp.micro. comparisons would be helpful. I personally don't find the
ongoing discussion too disturbing. Frequently I learn something about my
computer that I would not have known without reading the comparative
discussion, ie the uses of multitasking.
Richard Foy
ra...@mcnc.uucp
>>
>>Also, if you like Mac software, you can get a cartridge relatively
>>cheaply that plugs into the st case and presto -- color Mac.
>>Apparently, the ST actually runs many Mac program faster than the
>>Mac...
>I hate to continue this discussion, but the above assertion is an outright
>LIE!
>
>Some friends of mine who own Atari ST machines came over to my house
>one evening with their STs and their Mac-Cartridges, and we systematically
>tried my entire software collection (over 100 programs, public domain
>and otherwise) . LESS THAT 5% OF IT RAN!
>
Let's not get carried away Peter.. perhaps you guys were less
than careful with the testing. I've had considerable success with the
Sac, certainly far greater than 5%. The main thing is to have
patience, and try the current *and* previous revs of the driver
software, and also finders 4.1 and 1.1g, and *not* 5.x. After some
initial trial and error, I've gotten almost everything I needed to
run, and I know of others who use many other programs that are important
in the Mac context (one guy actually does his user group newsletter
with RSG!)
>These friends, who had been chiding me continuously for the past few
>weeks that their ataris "would be a mac for $100's less, and faster too"
>quickly changed their tune after actually testing the product.
Too bad, they missed out on a goodie.. perhaps you can tell
them about this, and I'd be glad to correspond if they have
questions.
>Unfortunately, I've noticed this phenomenon occuring a lot more in people
>who are Atari fanatics. I trust that this is just a statistical anomoly...
Hmm.. I smell the bl**d of an Amigaian..
> But don't be fooled into thinking that you can get a mac
> w/out getting a mac...
Boy, I'm sure glad I got fooled!
>Peter "try it before you preach about it" Korn
Perhaps that ought to be 'try it carefully with an open mind' ?
>-----
>Peter "Arrgh" Korn
-ravi
jo...@gould9.uucp
--
Joel West MCI Mail: 282-8879
Western Software Technology, POB 2733, Vista, CA 92083
{cbosgd, ihnp4, pyramid, sdcsvax, ucla-cs} !gould9!joel
joel%gould...@NOSC.ARPA
ew...@well.uucp
This is the only public contribution I'm going to make to this
"discussion." It's long and verbose in the hopes that the amount of
information encoded herein will overload the input buffers of the other
contributors, causing them to crash, leaving the net safe for another few
months.
I had hoped that all these issues were thoroughly covered in Boing
Wars I, sometime last year. Since I am a bit of a cynical and caustic
person when I get irritated, and since I'm also high on Industrial Strength
Contac at the moment (I have a cold), the following posting is the result.
But first, a disclaimer:
- - - ---===>>> NOTE <<<===--- - - -
The following is the PERSONAL OPINION of the poster. While the
poster freely and openly admits to having an inflated ego, and suffers from
megalomania, and would just as soon declare the following diatribe as
inarguable fact, common sense dictates that they are merely opinions, and
should be treated as such. People are fallable (although the poster would
never admit to it), and as such are wont to reach conclusions that may be
based more in emotion than in fact. The poster tries to avoid this whenever
possible, but he, too, is guilty of it. Please forgive him.
Read the preceeding paragraph once more, just so that you know what
you're in for, and how you should respond (or, better yet, reduce net
traffic; don't respond).
The following is a rather cynical and caustic look at many of the
microcomputers available to the general public today. Both positive and
negative points are covered. This list is by no means complete, and feature
coverage of each system is also incomplete. DO NOT BASE A BUYING DECISION
ON THE FOLLOWING; STUDY THE SYSTEMS YOU'RE INTERESTED IN ON YOUR OWN
CAREFULLY!
The list is in no particular order.
--------
Timex/Sinclair ZX-80:
A Z-80 based system designed for introducing the individual to the
world of computers.
+: It has a very low price, plugs into the family TV, and is useable by
just about anybody. It contains a reasonable sub-set of BASIC, and
sports some graphics capability (mostly character oriented).
-: The machine is basically a smart doorstop. It has a membrane
keyboard which is almost impossible to type on (it does make the
machine waterproof, though). It has very little memory, stores
programs on cassette, and isn't really useful for anything.
Opinion:
A bit of a joke, really. Was probably a high-school student's
senior project.
--------
Atari 800/800XL/130XE:
A 6502-based (close enough) system designed for game playing and
general purpose computing.
+: The system has decent graphics, and comes with a full 64K of RAM,
filling the 6502 address space. It can handle cartridge, cassette,
or diskette-based software. The BASIC supplied is respectable. The
graphics and sound chips sport many unusual and useful features not
found in other systems. The CPU runs at 2 MHz, twice the speed of
most other 6502-based systems. Can be purchased for under $100.
-: No one writes software for this beast anymore (well, nearly no one).
The video chip steps on the CPU for DMA far too often, slowing the
thing down tremendously. The disk drive software is bizarre. None
of the connectors on the thing resemble anything standard. The
keyboard on the 130XE is atrocious; the 800XL's was much better.
The standard text screen is 38 columns wide. Where did they get
this figure?
Opinion:
Not a bad little box. I used to hate it for political reasons,
until I found out more about the hardware inside. I wish I'd spent more
time with it.
--------
Commodore 64/128:
A 6502-based system designed for introductory computing and game
playing.
+: The first low-priced 6502 system to ever come out, beating the Apple
and Atari systems by hundreds. High-resolution graphics with 16
colors, 3 sound channels with filtering, and sprites. Sports a full
keyboard. Also contains a full featured BASIC interpreter, with
full-screen editing capabilities.
-: Design errors in the VIC ][ chip make the display feeb out if you
try anything fancy. VIC ][ chip also tromps the processor every
eight video lines to do display DMA. Disk drive interface is
SERIAL! (effective 3000 baud throughput.) Joystick port is really
the keyboard scanner matrix; tilting the joystick causes "keys" to
be pressed.
Opinion:
Marginal. It could have been much better, if they hadn't screwed up
the VIC ][ design so badly, and if the damn disk drive was faster.
--------
Apple ][/][+/][e/][c:
A 6502-based system designed for general-purpose computing.
+: Zillions of programs exist for this thing. Internal slots allow
many expansion possibilities. Sports text, lo-res, and hi-res
graphics. Has a full keyboard. Comes with BASIC interpreter and
machine language monitor.
-: The machine is obsolete, even though its price doesn't reflect it.
The machine was originally a clever hack by a clever engineer, but
has NEVER evolved beyond it. The screen mapping for all three
viewing modes is outrageous. The disk controller is software. All
the flavors of DOS have bizarre bugs. DOS and BASIC never did merge
properly (to open a file, you PRINT "^DOPEN FILE").
Opinion:
Obsolete. Dead. A fossil. Apple just doesn't know it yet. If
they drop the price of the thing to $200 or less, it may wake up again, but
I doubt that will happen.
--------
Texas Instruments 99/4a:
A TMS-9900 based system designed for introductory computing.
+: Came with a subset of ANSI BASIC. Was the first 16 bit micro
computer. Pricing made it affordable by families.
-: A shortsighted and greedy management at TI killed the system by
making it: incompatible with everything on the planet (ANSI
BASIC??!!), unable to run anything except their own software,
expensive to upgrade, only came with 16K RAM, and slower than death
by old age. Also came with a keyboard that was unreal (to type the
" (double quote) character, you had to press FCTN-P).
Opinion:
An extermely bad joke. Machine level programming couldn't even save
this monster (the TMS-9900 processor had no internal registers, you see).
The keyboard was what really got to me.
--------
IBM PC/PC-XT/PC-AT:
An Intel-based system designed for general-purpose computing.
+: Comes with 256K RAM, BASIC, PC-DOS 3 point something. Has a
heirarchial file system. Has zillions of business applications
written for it. Sports a full detatchable keyboard. Has internal
slots to permit inexpensive memory and peripheral upgrades. It's
made by IBM, which means it probably won't break anytime soon.
-: Uses the Intel processor, which is segmented, making programming
more difficult than it should be. IBM's own systems are chronically
slower and more expensive than equivalent clones. The keyboard is
laid out wrong (the AT keyboard is slightly better). Applications
for the system are expensive and require a fully loaded system (i.e.
640K). 640K never seems to be enough, either.
Opinion:
A yawner. Technologically unintersting. But it works. Apparently,
that's all people seem to care about. When will they learn :-)?
--------
Macintosh/Macintosh Plus:
A 68000-based system designed for general-purpose computing.
+: An extremely easy-to-use user interface makes learning the system
simple. Comes with high-resolution graphics. Has a DAC output
channel for sound. A full stroke keyboard and mouse are standard
equipment. The system is widely accepted as the standard machine
for "Desktop Publishing."
-: It looks like a toaster. Graphics are monochrome only, and you
can't hook in your own monitor. The screen is too small. The file
system (on the 512K units) is S-L-O-W. The disk drives don't know
what speed to run at. You can't eject a disk when you want to. The
video circuit tromps ALL of RAM when it does DMA for display, thus
slowing down the 68K to an effective 4MHz. The machine is also
overpriced for what it is.
Opinion:
Hardware and software design screw-ups make this one of the most
ridiculous machines out there. It also suffers from Apple's strange pricing
structure. I suppose I shouldn't complain, though. The machine works, and
it works for people who never touched a computer before....
--------
Apple ][GS:
A 65816-based system designed for general-purpose computing.
+: Compatible with the Apple ][? systems, meaning it can run zillions
of programs. Has an upgraded and faster CPU, making applications
run much faster. Has 15 channel sound capability. Comes with
high-resolution graphics with a choice of 4096 colors.
-: OVERPRICED!! Inherits all the problems associated with the Apple
][? systems. Has a strange keyboard (the spacebar is too small).
Insists on having a blue background screen for the BASIC
environment (which I hate). Has ridiculously slow disk access time,
and takes forever for the program launcher to start up. Audio
hardware designed wrong (if you turn up the volume high enough, you
can hear the GS thinking).
Opinion:
Oh, please. Will they never get it right? Granted, running
Choplifter at 2.8 MHz is exciting. For about five minutes. In order to
improve the ][ series, they have to fundamentally change the design, not
just make the CPU faster. And where did this $2000 price tag come from?
--------
Atari *ST:
A 68000-based system designed for introductory and general-purpose
computing.
+: Inexpensive. 68000 runs at a full 8MHz. Minimum memory
configuration is 512K. 1M systems are available. Sports high
resolution graphics in either color or monochrome. Also has an
iconic desktop user interface to make use of the system easier.
Comes with a MIDI interface.
-: GEM is a dog. The desktop is clumsy and SLOW. The operating system
doesn't seem to handle exceptional conditions well (just a little
bomb icon is supposed to tell us everything). You need to choose
between monochrome or color; you can't have both at the same time.
The keyboard has a dead feel to it, and hitting multiple keys is
too easy. Disk I/O is unusually slow, and appears to do no track
buffering.
Opinion:
A nice box. A bit on the boring side, but a nice box. Someone
should port BSD UNIX to it.
--------
Amiga:
A 68000-based system designed for general-purpose computing, game
playing, and video production.
+: Relatively inexpensive (compared to equivalent systems). Comes with
several custom chips to help off-load the CPU burden. CPU runs at
7.14 MHz. Sports high resolution graphics with 4096 colors (all
visible at once). Has 4 DAC sound channels, co-processor, blitter,
interrupt controller, etc. Has iconic desktop for ease of use.
First mass-marketed micro to have a multi-tasking OS.
-: The DOS is a pig. System software is still buggy after two (count
em') revisions. Does not have the variety of software available for
other systems. Expansion of the system is expensive (average $1000+
for a 20M hard disk). Peripherals promised years ago still haven't
arrived (Genlock, A-Live! (GenLock may be here, but I haven't seen
it)).
Opinion:
A truly neat box. Has some deficiencies, but it's the first system
since the Apple ][ that a hacker can really get into and play with.
--------
Summary:
--------
Timex-Sinclair ZX-80: Doorstop
Atari 800/800XL/130XE: Nice box
Commodore 64/128: Marginal
Apple ][/][+/][e/][c: Fossil
Texas Instruments 99/4a: Junk
IBM PC/PC-XT/PC-AT: Yawner
Macintosh/Macintosh Plus: Useable junk
Apple ][GS: Expensive junk
Atari *ST: Nice box
Amiga: Neeto box
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now that I'm finished, and that everyone on the net agrees that I'm
a complete jacka--, could we.....
PLEASE STOP THIS STUPID BICKERING BEFORE THE SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO
DROPS TO ZERO, AND SOMEONE STARTS MODERATING THIS GROUP!!!
While arguing about these machines can be fun at times, wouldn't it
be better if we devoted our energies towards writing wonderful software for
these wonderful machines?
The Contac is wearing off; I better go now before I become sane...
(In case you still haven't noticed....... :-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-)
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
________ ___ Leo L. Schwab
\ /___--__ The Guy in The Cape
___ ___ /\ ---##\ ihnp4!ptsfa!well!ewhac
/ X \_____ | __ _---)) ..or..
/ /_\-- -----+==____\ // \ _ well ---\
___ ( o---+------------------O/ \/ \ dual ----> !unicom!ewhac
\ / ___ \_ (`o ) hplabs -/ ("AE-wack")
____ \___/ \_/
Recumbent Bikes: "Work FOR? I don't work FOR
The _ O_ n_ l_ y Way To Fly! anybody! I'm just having fun."
jo...@gould9.uucp
> I *think* I heard that Microsoft settled out of court for what would
> probably be considered a small amount of money (<$1M, I think).
Seattle lost some early court rulings last Fall, limiting their rights to,
I believe, the original image and 8086/8088 machines. For example,
they would not have been able to sell an AT version.
They settled out of court some time in December. ~~ $1M seems about right.
ra...@mit-atrp.uucp
A humble request: Could the discussion of the origin of MS-DOS be
restricted to the newsgroup "comp.sys.ibm.pc" ? Or even just there
and in comp.sys.os (or whatever is appropriate ?).
Send your followups carefully, this present discussion has been on too many
groups. Just take a look at the automatic "Newsgroups:" header for this
message I just sent. Thanks for your attention !
Ralph, a comp.sys.amiga reader.
fr...@husc4.uucp
>Now, now, now. Lets not get context switching confused with multi-tasking. On
>the Mac with swither, only one program is running at a time. You can't start
>a program compile, and switch to another program and do something else in the
>mean time. When you switch to another program, the other programs are not
>running, just the one in front of you.
I respect the Amiga's multitasking, and I certainly don't mean to
imply that Switcher is multitasking, but I think there is a point that
should be made. In addition to the much-discussed background down-
loaders and printers, Thunderscan software (written by Andy Hertzfeld,
Switcher's author) is designed to scan under Switcher while you are
doing something else in another partition. This is of course a tribute
to Andy's abilities, but it also demonstrates that multitasking is not
IMPOSSIBLE on the Mac, merely inconvenient. And there was also the
great MultiMac mystery, which seemed a good step in the right direction.
David Fry f...@huma1.harvard.EDU
Department of Mathematics f...@harvma1.bitnet
Harvard University fry%hu...@harvsc4.bitnet
Cambridge, MA 02138 ...!harvard!huma1!fry
John McNamee
> Does any one remember what happend?
It went to trial and before a final ruling was issued Microsoft decided to
end it by paying off SCP to secure the rights free and clear.
--
John McNamee j...@BNL.ARPA decvax!philabs!sbcs!bnl!jpm
"Timesharing is the use of many people by a computer"
j...@gitpyr.uucp
In article <67...@aero.ARPA> f...@aero.UUCP (Richard Foy) writes:
>In article <28...@ihlpa.UUCP> seb...@ihlpa.UUCP (Bruun) writes:
>>Damn, I'm really getting very, very tired of all this "My computer is
>>[bigger/meaner/better/faster/more lovable] than yours" crap. Could all
>>of you little boys and girls please go outside and play, and let the
>>rest of us get some serious work done here.
(I think I smell smoke.....)
> [...] I personally don't find the
>ongoing discussion too disturbing. Frequently I learn something about my
>computer that I would not have known without reading the comparative
>discussion, ie the uses of multitasking.
(what's that crackling noise?...)
You WOULD be disturbed if you subscribed to comp.sys.m68k and didn't give
a rat's ass about the Mac OR the Amiga. I apologize for being so churlish,
but I have read enough of this insipid, useless prattle in a newsgroup where
it doesn't belong.
I get sick and tired of seeing "<N> articles in comp.sys.m68k - read? [ynq]",
typing "y", and finding that <N-1> of said articles are of the form "my
computer happens to have a 68000 and can beat up your computer". Can we
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE take this discussion elsewhere (I personally nominate
talk.religion.really.stupid.meaningless.arguments.about.computers <- no
emoticon - I'm serious, folks).
This is not a personal attack on Mr. Foy - his article just prompted it.
Believe it or not, there are people in the world who use the 68000 and do
not own a 68000-based computer. How about putting this discussion to bed?
Jim Greenlee
--
The Shadow...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!jkg
Jryy, abj lbh'ir tbar naq qbar vg! Whfg unq gb xrrc svqqyvat jvgu vg hagvy lbh
oebxr vg, qvqa'g lbh?!
clu...@runx.uucp
The last thing we need are dozens of Amigans poisoning us with anti-Mac garbage.
Even that Haynie fellow at CBM cannot help himself - he sounds like a mac with
a grudge against Apple, always attacking the Mac for having DAs.
END
jimo...@lsuc.uucp
Ross Miller mentioned the ST Emulator for the Amiga. This program
is a fake and meant as a joke only. It draws the Atari screen and then
does nothing. You have to reboot the computer.
Cheers! -- Jim O.
jimo...@lsuc.uucp
Last night I was particularly busy and I had an excellent chance to
confirm OS-9 Multitasking on the Atari 1040ST. I did a mass download with
Kermit from my Unix node with the following command line:
kermit rl /t1 >>>temp &
The '>>>temp' is a redirection of 'stdout' and 'stderr' to a file.
While that was going on (over a half hour's worth of download at 1200 baud)
I began a formatted printout with the 'pr' utility as follows:
pr -l=5 >/p &
That printout was something like 20 pages and ran for a fairly long
time in itself. It was done before the download.
While doing all that I edited a couple of files with the Scred full
screen text editor. I found no apparent degredation, even with cursor
movements and screen redrawing. Memory left over tended to be around
250K to 350K depending on what I was doing at any given time. This is
typical (I was using 64K for Hard Disk Cache and 256K RAM disk and had
booted from TOS indirectly leaving all the TOS/GEM memory intact *beside*
OS-9 in RAM).
I also did some re-arranging of files on the Hard Disk without problems
(ie. No interference with disk accesses from Kermit's download).
In fact, it's my impression that if I had a 2nd RS-232 port I could
easily have started another connection to another system for Telecom or
even more crossloading.
Cheers! -- Jim O.
bra...@batcomputer.uucp
In the Atari ST (or the Mac, as far as I know) there is NO polling of the
keyboard (nor the mouse): They are INTERRUPT-DRIVEN. Since it takes
very little time to process the incoming keystrokes relative to the
time in-between keystrokes, that does not degrade performance. And
it has absolutely nothing to do with multi-tasking. Beyond that, the
ST (or GEM, rather) has a "limited multi-tasking kernel" which lets
one 'application' and several 'desk-accesories' (in other words, several
programs) run simultaneously, each being reactivated when a message is
addressed to it (e.g. a keystroke or a mouse click), but not bothered
when not necessary.
As for background reading of the disk: Usually a program NEEDS the data
it requested from the disk drive BEFORE it can do anything else, so
no amount of multi-tasking will speed that program up while it's waiting.
On the other hand, SOME specially-designed programs sometimes read the
disk BEFORE the data is needed, i.e. invite an overlap of reading the
disk and some other processing. On the ST that is possible too, since
the disk I/O is done via the DMA chip, which (as far as I know) CAN take
a command and then execute it independently. It does steal CPU memory
cycles for that, though (or does it? experts, step up?).
- Moshe Braner
PS: I am just trying to clarify the notion of "true multi-tasking",
and NOT to continue religious wars about which machine is better.
b...@well.uucp
Sender:
Reply-To: b...@well.UUCP (Jim Becker)
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Keywords:
In article <13...@kontron.UUCP> cra...@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>> In article <14...@rayssdb.RAY.COM>, r...@rayssdb.RAY.COM (Richard A. Brooks)
>> writes:
>> > (could any-
>> > thing with the IBM name flop??)
>>
>> This is a joke, right?
>>
>> Things with the IBM name flop all the time. Look at the PC Portable (IBM's
>> answer to Compaq) or the PC Jr (who could forget that?).
>>
>> And don't forget about the 8100.
>> --
>> John A. Muth ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun,nsc}!amdahl!muth
>
>And the 4" microfloppy standard that IBM adopted -- then quietly dropped
>when everyone adopted the Sony 3.5" microfloppy standard.
>
>IBM is NOT 10' tall -- their success is at least partly the quality of
>their manufactured products and documentation. If they were a small
>company producing what they have produced, they would become a big company
>eventually.
>
>Clayton E. Cramer
The success of IBM is not particuarily due to their products, from a
HISTORICAL viewpoint. The success of IBM has to do with their abilities in
those avenues that attract the customer, marketing - sales - customer support.
If you look at the philosophy of the company from day one and what they have
done over the years you will realize that they are not the innovators but
they provide the support for their products. You also notice that Apple has
taken up this role as a second to IBM. They are supporting their products
and developers and customers and dealers. There are a lot of Apples
everywhere. I am currently reading the book "The Home Computer Wars", about
Commodore and Jack Tramiel. Commodore does not have this approach to the
world. They are out there to sell numbers for cheap cost, dealer support and
enduser support are not part of it.
If you are developing for the Amiga assume that there will be little
support at getting the computer marketed. You are going to have to do it
on your own. Commodore has always been in this mode since Jack Tramiel
started the company and you should be aware of it. I personally love the
Amiga and have written a lot of code to utilize it, being the author of
the InfoMinder product. But you should understand that you are fighting
every inch of the way creating products for this great computer, Commodore
has historically not been supportative in the things that make a company
last for the long run, good marketing and SUPPORT OF CUSTOMERS. There are
seven million C64's out there but I bet that there are more Apple IIs being
used day in and out, the Commodores are in the closets - like the Atari 2600s.
Enough said, I hope that this raises the level of discussion on this topic
to a higher level and provokes a lot of flames and hate mail. I think that
a lot of you are assuming a lot about the acceptance of the Amiga in using
it as a comsumer good. If you are vertically integrating it you are ok but
the lowly (!) developer creating products for this machine should understand
the field. This is the view from my terminal, what is yours ???
-Jim Becker[A
-Jim Becker
Terrapin Software
b...@well.uucp
Multi-tasking is a super important part of the Amiga, if you care to take
it as an advantage. You can have a single program commanding any number
of processes and tasks to create the user inferface and magic of the program.
If you want to add in sound to a program it becomes a seperate application,
seperate to code and debug and use, but can coexists with the main program.
If you care to you can really do a lot of stuff with the different chips
and capabilities of the Amiga without slowing the main body of your program,
just have different processes and/or tasks that interact using messages
or signals.
I come from the big computers to the Amiga, because there is SOOOOO much
potential for great programs. It reguires that the developer think about
different interactions between processes, but in the long run it is an
advantage that can really make the Amiga a bigger success than anything
else out there --- assuming that people here about the Amiga in a positive
light from those that write about computers. Thank you Jerry about the
Commodore blurb in InfoWorld, I also think that the "unshown machine(s)"
are wonderful, if they get them all working and to the people and get the
trade presses to like Commodore again. Lots to do, many hills ahead.
-Jim Becker
Terrapin Software
t...@hoptoad.uucp
let the words "operating system" slip out, I say that it's the main program
that's always running and that controls how all the other programs run.
This seems to satisfy them, and as far as I can tell it seems to be
accurate, though non-jargonistic.
For a computer type, I would probably say that it is software which helps
other (client) software deal with the files, processes, and devices of the
computer system. This would mean that standard software libraries and
standard applications which are not in the kernel should be considered part
of the OS, but I don't have any problem with that.
By the way, I think user-space file servers are undesirable because there is
likely to be context switching overhead in the processing of remote file
requests. This creates scheduling latency in a non-real-time system - that
is, the process scheduler has to be invoked before any packet can be fully
processed - and this tends to slow down protocols enormously. File servers
should be put in the kernel where possible, like all other network
protocols. It is regrettable that UNIX requires a static linking and
rebooting to do so; perhaps someday someone will come up with a
dynamic-linking version of UNIX to help with protocol (and driver, and file
system, etc.) development and maintenance.
--
Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot
{ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp)
hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)
Second Coming Still Vaporware After 2,000 Years
m...@eris.uucp
>As for background reading of the disk: Usually a program NEEDS the data
>it requested from the disk drive BEFORE it can do anything else, so
>no amount of multi-tasking will speed that program up while it's waiting.
>On the other hand, SOME specially-designed programs sometimes read the
>disk BEFORE the data is needed, i.e. invite an overlap of reading the
>disk and some other processing. On the ST that is possible too, since
>the disk I/O is done via the DMA chip, which (as far as I know) CAN take
>a command and then execute it independently. It does steal CPU memory
>cycles for that, though (or does it? experts, step up?).
DMA doesn't steal CPU cycles; it steals bus cycles. The performance
impact can run from little or nothing with double-speed, dual-ported
memory, to very significant (as in "why bother?") with stock memory
and a memory-intensive processor/application pair.
Of course, the real win in most applications isn't "read-ahead", but
"write-behind." On Unix (and AmigaDOS), a task issues a write, the OS
catches & allocates a block on disk, returns ok, then starts the
physical I/O. This is a win because the application doesn't have to do
it by hand, and the OS can do it more effectively than it can do
read-ahead. The same effect can be achieved on a single-tasking
system with a write-through cache, but I've seen very few systems do
that. Most people just do ram-disk, which has similar performance (for
the limited set of things in it), and is much easier to do.
<mike
su...@hoptoad.uucp
>
>A humble request: Could the discussion of the origin of MS-DOS be
>restricted to the newsgroup "comp.sys.ibm.pc" ? Or even just there
>and in comp.sys.os (or whatever is appropriate ?).
>
--
Sunny Kirsten
POB 459
Forest Knolls, CA 94933
(707)928-5546
USENET: {sun,ptsfa,well,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucsfcgl,nsc,frog}!hoptoad!sunny
i...@minnie.uucp
>Sender:
>Reply-To: b...@well.UUCP (Jim Becker)
>Followup-To:
>Distribution:
>Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
>Keywords:
>
>In article <13...@kontron.UUCP> cra...@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>>> In article <14...@rayssdb.RAY.COM>, r...@rayssdb.RAY.COM (Richard A. Brooks)
>>> writes:
>>> > (could any-
>>> > thing with the IBM name flop??)
>>>
.
.
>>
>>Clayton E. Cramer
>
>
>The success of IBM is not particuarily due to their products, from a
>HISTORICAL viewpoint. The success of IBM has to do with their abilities in
>those avenues that attract the customer, marketing - sales - customer support.
.
.
>the field. This is the view from my terminal, what is yours ???
>
>-Jim Becker[A
>-Jim Becker
>Terrapin Software
Why is this discussion on comp.sys.m68k?
--I
--
uucp: ihnp4!nrcvax!ihm
ma...@bucsb.bu.edu.uucp
>In article <14...@rayssdb.RAY.COM>, r...@rayssdb.RAY.COM (Richard A. Brooks)
>writes:
>> (could any-
>> thing with the IBM name flop??)
>
>
>Things with the IBM name flop all the time. Look at the PC Portable (IBM's
>answer to Compaq) or the PC Jr (who could forget that?).
>
>And don't forget about the 8100.
NOTHING was as big a flop as their System/23. That was their original
try at a PC. Used EBCDIC. BASIC was its OS and only language. Not
only that, but it was the slowest basic ever (and not too close to what
I would call basic anyway). Used huge, slow, noisy 8" drives, and if
you didn't have the printer turned on, it wouldn't boot.
Yup, I've used one. Can tell you I know why it flopped!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
- Jim Frost * The Madd Hacker -
UUCP: ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd | ARPANET: ma...@bucsb.bu.edu
CSNET: madd%bucsb@bu-cs | BITNET: cscc71c@bostonu
-------------------------------+---+------------------------------------
"Oh beer, oh beer." -- Me | [=(BEER) <- Bud the Beer (cheers!)