Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis
From: dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at home...)
Message-ID: <683@tronsbox.xei.com>
Date: 16 Jan 91 15:35:48 GMT
References: <1991Jan14.221532.4431@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <11719@goofy.Apple.COM> <1991Jan16.015035.10356@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Organization: Romantic Encounters BBS
Lines: 31

In article <1991Jan16.015035.10356@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>Pausing for i/o is a separate consideration; the "cooperation" required
>for cooperative multitasking is built into the OS i/o routines. Waiting
>for i/o _is_ cooperating. It is the case of a routine that goes CPU
>bound and doesn't bother to give back to the OS the chance to allow
>another task to execute that differentiates cooperative from preemptive
>multitasking.
>
	StuffIt 1.5.1 has a little dialog box that opens when you run it, 
which slices and hands out the usual "here's who wrote this, it's shareware,
pay or die" bologna.  You click on it, and it goes away.  Fair enough.  That
is, it would be if the author hadn't decided to bypass the Macintosh Way of
Checking Input Events According to Cardinal Toolbox.  Instead of calling the
proper system routine, he peeked the mouse registers directly.  He thus
bypassed the normal MultiFinder piggybacks.

	My aforementioned Mac developer friend once started StuffIt 1.5.1 while
downloading some stuff over a network and walked away.  When he came back a 
while later, he discovered that StuffIt had not only stopped HIS machine, but
it had hung the network.

	This was over a DIALOG BOX, people.

	Pre-emptive Multitasking Is Your Friend.



dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com   ...uunet!tronsbox!dfrancis     GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1
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"Using C will definitely cut your life expectancy by 10 years or more."
	-- Carl Sassenrath, GURU'S GUIDE TO THE COMMODORE AMIGA