Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!sun-barr!texsun!newstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Multitasking on the ST
Message-ID: <119846@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 7 Aug 89 22:02:02 GMT
References: <8908021826.AA05333@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <4099@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 22

At the risk of dating myself, the multitasking discussion reminds me of 
the CP/M hard disk wars. At the time, ST506 (5Meg) hard disks were real
high tech, but most users had a pair of double sided 8" floppies giving 
them 2.4M of removable storage. People with floppies would always argue
how useless a 5Meg drive was, they could replace entire development systems
by just swapping a floppy. And floppies naturally organized their data into
generic chunks. The hard disk users would crow about "high speed access"
and having several editors available without having to change disks. The
fact of the matter was, both were right and both were wrong. Most dedicated
floppy users become convinced after a using a hard disk for a while that it
is the greatest thing since sliced bread ('til it crashes of course! :-)) 
and most people using single tasking OS's find uses for multitasking OS's 
and after a while can't live without them. In another 5 years when the 
standard micro is a '030 or '386 based box with an MMU it will be the
rarity that you _don't_ have a multitasking OS. But in the mean time, 
OS's are OS's. If they do the job, then like the 8" floppies before them
they are not worth arguing about.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"