Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!daver!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Z machine et al Message-ID: <1990Dec28.001940.25138@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 28 Dec 90 00:19:40 GMT References: <1029.2772FECD@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> <1990Dec23.084244.17796@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 25 vinsci@nic.funet.fi (Leonard Norrgard) writes: >>kevin (guest account) writes: >>I'm not sure when the port was done tho, but it might actually have >>been the first CBM multitasking computer available :-). >I seem to remember there was an old hack to run multiple basic >programs simultaneously on the PET. It wasn't really useful due to the >slowness, but still ;-). Anyone have a better moemory of this? Not too sure it is fair to characterize the Pet as slow; I saw several collecting seven to nine simultaneous reasonably high speed channels of meteorological data each during a big weather project I was part of in 1981 (computer operator and ship jockey). The folks running the show confirmed that they were doing the collecting using BASIC, though I wasn't sophisticated enough about BASIC in those days to ask if they were running an assembly kernel in there somewhere. The Pets had replaced multimillion dollar special hardware used for the same purpose in 1974. On the other hand, dumping text to the screen from BASIC was painfully slow, even for those days. Perhaps that is where the perception of a slow BASIC arose. Kent, the man from xanth.