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From: jsd@wahoo.rice.edu (Shawn Joel Dube)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at home...)
Message-ID: <1991Jan21.055854.14130@rice.edu>
Date: 21 Jan 91 05:58:54 GMT
References: <1991Jan18.231330.16290@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <7553@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Jan21.004720.25985@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <12880@life.ai.mit.edu>
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Reply-To: jsd@wahoo.rice.edu (Shawn Joel Dube)
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In article <12880@life.ai.mit.edu>, rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
|> 
|> *=Cycle
|> 
|>   Amiga   Time --->
|> Task A  |********        ********        ********        ********>
|> Task B  |        ********        ********        ********        >
|> 
|>   Mac   
|> Task A  |*****               **     ****** *************  **  ***>
|> Task B  |     ***************  *****      *             **  **   >
|> 
 
Nice chart.

|>  In my own opinion cooperative multitasking is not multitasking, simply
|> because its not very transparent. 

The multi-tasking on our school's Sun Sparcs is sometimes noticible so
does that mean they don't have multitasking? :)  

Seriously, I think cooperative is better. Take the following for example:
Two task are running.  One is waiting on a keypress (via OS subroutine)
and the other is doing some serious number-crunching.  With the Amiga, valuable
time is being spent doing nothing (waiting for a keypress).  With co-op
multitasking, almost all of the cpu time is spent with the number cruncher.

Yes, I agree it would make the system somewhat unstable but I don't consider
this a problem except when playing games or doing animation.


|>   Can Mac programs talk to each other? send signals, semaphores? 

If programmed to do so, yes.  I believe in the next release of the Mac OS,
the ability to have something like Window's Dynamic Data Link will exist
that the Amiga (correct if I'm wrong) doesn't have.

|> Can they share files, disc resources? 

I'll have to pass on that one.

|> Can the Mac update screen windows that are
|> behind other windows without bringing them to front?

Yes.

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