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From: kdarling@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Help --> How to prevent the visit from the dreaded guru
Keywords: Flip answers are no help
Message-ID: <1991Jan4.224833.24914@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 91 22:48:33 GMT
References: <611@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
Sender: news@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: NCSU Computing Center
Lines: 42


  Larry Phillips says about preventing GURU visits:
>> A new OS will not protect you from errors in your code, or ill-behaved
>> programs, or hardware failures. Investigate; do some digging.

 Dave Schaumann replies:
> Those are some rather flip answers to what, IMHO, is the Amiga's greatest
> shortcoming: any program can crash the whole system quite easily.

Umm. But they were correct answers for the _real world_ case: the current
Amiga OS/hardware configuration.  Blue-skying begs the question.

> To my mind, this is unacceptable in a multitasking machine.
> I believe that CBM has got away with it up til now because no-one
> else even had multitasking.  [...]  Who wants a computer when
> one unstable program makes the whole platform unstable?

There are three main scenarios for multitasking machines:
  1. Used by developer only
  2. Used by end user only
  3. Used by both developer and enduser

In (1), crashing is a pain, but not "unacceptable".  In (3), crashing
would be unacceptable...on a multiuser system... but since almost all Amigas
are **single-user** systems, the offending programmer is also the enduser
and should surely recognize when he's about to try something dangerous ;-).

That leaves (2), and the culling out of unstable programs renders a totally
stable enduser system... it's as simple as that.

So in return, here's _my_ own beefs <g>:  First, the unspeakable horror
of today's CS majors who rely on hardware to catch their mistakes.  Second,
the unrealistic expectation that inexpensive personal computers should have
all the bells and whistles of the expensive "machines I use at school".

Now I'll backtrack -- Yes, hardware protection is A Good Thing (so go buy
a $99 Tandy CoCo-3... it's got an MMU :).  And I'd be terribly surprised if
Amiga Unix doesn't use it.  Further, I think you're right that _eventually_
all personals will have and use an MMU.  But I also think it's gonna take
some radical changes to most current personal OS's to add that capability.
Or rather, it would break most current programs.
  best - Kevin  <kdarling@catt.ncsu.edu>  <76703.4227@compuserve.com>