Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!xanthian
From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Multitasking at home (Was Reality check: ....)
Message-ID: <1990Dec23.103612.7666@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Date: 23 Dec 90 10:36:12 GMT
References: <1990Dec18.002802.624@lavaca.uh.edu> <37101@cup.portal.com> <41689@ut-emx.uucp>
Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix
Lines: 76

awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) writes:
> Lee_Robert_Willis@cup.portal.com writes:

>>True multitasking is even better, since my application can number crunch,
>>paginate, spell check, update databases, etc. without making me wait.

>OK, guys.  I've been following the group for a while since I've been thinking
>of getting a 500 or 2000.  Just exactly what does the Amiga's true multitasking
>let me do (other than formatting disks) that I can't do on my Mac?

Well, I'm not sure what your Mac can do, but here is a very typical scenario
for me, all running at once (I've got a _lot_ of RAM):

    Terminal session going, highest priority, downloading a series of
    files with kermit from my host site into recoverable ram disk
    storage; this typically takes several hours; I have a slow modem.
    The download status is continually being displayed, and I flip to
    this screen with a keypress occasionally to see how things are
    going.

    On another virtual screen, accessible with a keypress, in a window,
    one of the just downloaded files being unpacked into a recoverable
    ram disk directory for repackaging from .zoo to .lharc to save 20%
    of the storage space.

    In another window, a several hour mail merging program is appending
    newly arrived mail to the nearly 2000 existing mail files on my hard
    disk; this requires occassional attention from me.

    Two small windows controlling formatting the two blank floppies in
    my disk drive onto which to store the reformatted files.

Me? I'm not looking at any of this; I'm either using emacs in a window
that covers all the others to whip up a control script for the next
operation, or writing some new code, or, if all is under control for a
moment, I use the mouse to switch to a third screen, and pick up my
nethack game in progress. Now, granted, there are a lot of cpu cycles
being sucked up here, so the nethack motion is a little jerky, but it's
not a real time game, so that doesn't matter much, and it beats staring
at a screen waiting for something to finish, in a monotasking machine,
or whipping from paralyzed program to paralyzed program with a system
that suspends all but one, or possibly one and a trivial one, processes.

I'd been using BSD job control for a while to spawn background jobs to
do cpu intensive batch work, while I did keypress intensive editing or
gameplay; when the Amiga came out, nobody had to sell me on being able
to keep going with multitasking while the computer was busy, rather than
chairwarming until the computer finished the only job it could run, so I
bought one.

I've done professional software development in the PC-clone universe in
some of the interim, and a 33MHz Compaq under DOS, where I have to wait
for the computer, however fast, to finish it's compile, link, test,
update to the network common RCS files operations, isn't nearly as
productive a platform as an Amiga at a little over 7MHz, where I can
continue to work without waiting for the computer, however slow.

_The_ bottleneck limitation on my productivity is the amount of time I
have available to _actually_ _type_ _code_; on an Amiga, that can be 85%
of my time in front of the computer; on the Compaq, rarely could I
manage 15% of my computer time adding bytes of code.

Supporting my keypresses is very undemanding on a cpu, in fact is is
nearly dead idle when I edit a file, yet under vanilla DOS, editing a
file ties up the entire machine, and when the machine is doing almost
any other task I need done, it can't find time to serve my keypress and
editing display needs. The Amiga redresses this imbalance, to my great
benefit.

_That's_ what multitasking means to me.

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
--
Now if you need to know "What Entropy Means to Me", you have to ask
George Alec Effinger.  ;-)