Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: AmigaOS/UNIX - A Suggestion Message-ID: <6789@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 13 Oct 90 23:30:07 GMT References: <606@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> <298@pdxgate.UUCP> <6782@sugar.hackercorp.com> <8081@gollum.twg.com> Reply-To: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 25 In article <8081@gollum.twg.com> david@twg.com (David S. Herron) writes: > AmigaDOS programs must be able to control, exactly & precisely, the screen. > But if you have to do a context switch at every system call you can > pretty much kiss real-time goodbye. This is true. Standard UNIX and real-time are pretty much incompatible. But there's a hell of a lot of Amiga software that doesn't require real-time, and more that would be usable on a 3000 despite the lack of realtime. Do you really *care* if Blood Money occasionally pauses? Not OK for MIDI work, but fine for the amount of realtime most people do. Non-realtime display update for the normal UI is acceptable if it's fast enough. Look at the NeXT or Intergraph UIs. Plus, an aggressive AmigaOS compatibility box might be able to give you realtime response behind UNIX' back. Remember, you'd only need to be able to support *one* AmigaOS compatibility box... it's multitasking!... so you don't have to worry about having the AmigaOS drivers preempting the UNIX kernel. You could almost think of this as running UNIX under AmigaOS. (though I'd want to turn this off unless I was willing to let AmigaOS hang UNIX... which I might well be willing to do). -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' .