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From: navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David C. Navas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Commodore, Amiga, Apple, and MAC
Message-ID: <23823@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 8 Apr 90 23:08:39 GMT
References: <626@lovelady.cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (David C. Navas)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 57

another Mac and Amiga discussion.  No flames, some facts.
Most of you may want to hit 'n' right now, though....



In article <626@lovelady.cs.utexas.edu> s320@cs.utexas.edu (Spring 90) writes:
>Ah, guy,I just (yesterday) downloaded a BUNCH of stuff with my comm program in 
>the background in multifinder....and Bard's Tale and some other games (Pipe
>Dream, also,more that I don't remember) play sound FLAWLESSLY when they are in
>the background.  So MultiFinder obviously cuts it...

My examples were from frustrated Mac users.  My experience is on a Mac plus,
mileage may vary on more advanced machines.  Actually mileage *will* vary on
different machines.  However, even in the regular finder on a Mac plus, I
end up hitting the drag bar several times to move a window -- exactly because
I'm used to the Amiga's *instant* response, rather than the diddly response I
get from the Mac plus [an obviously outdated machine].

In fact, my *personal* experience is that diddly won't run on a 1 meg system
set up, and I'm lucky to get Word up under multifinder with a 1+ meg system.

Whereas I could play some simple music scores *and* program (from a harddrive,
of course) without worrying on my Amiga -- but we won't get into the memory
allocation scheme differences of the two systems....
 
>Please,folks, don't make pronouncements like this unless you know what you are
>talking about...notice I didn't say anything about the Amiga, as I am NOT very
>familiar with it, having used one only a few times...

I actually *do* know something about Macs, having written much on one, and
having played around extensively with it via A-Max.  I *don't* know the ins
and outs of getting multifinder to work (and confess that the downloading
problem was reported to me rather a long time ago), and frankly I don't think
it's worth my time figuring it out.

I do know that there are substantial differences between preemptive and non-
preemptive scheduling, otherwise no one would go to the bother of writing
preemptive kernels.  Never mind that Apple has been quoted in Byte as saying
that their operating system is not sufficient to take advantage of the MacIIfx
architecture, and conjecture that 7.0 may solve some of the deficiencies [sp?].

Frankly, this ought to be continued in e-mail, I'd love to hear stories on
how to get multifinder working (and stable), at the very least to help my
friends out.  At any rate, both systems have their weaknesses and kludges.
We have HAM, you have multifinder.  Let's all grow up and admit our problems
and grow and learn from each other -- isn't that what CS is supposed to be all
about?  I'd hate to think that misguidedness is dealt with by flames.
>-- 
>Ted Woodward (s320@cs.utexas.edu)
>
>Someone shot the food...

No flame intended, no flames responded to.  :)
*diddly is (C) advertising agency of you know who :) :) :)

David Navas                                   navas@cory.berkeley.edu
"Think you can, think you can't -- either way it's true."  Henry Ford