Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!davewt
From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How do we change the scheduler? (Was Re: Multitasking at home...)
Summary: Shawn doesn't know what he's talking about
Message-ID: <1991Jan22.034319.26269@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 22 Jan 91 03:43:19 GMT
References: <1991Jan21.004720.25985@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <12880@life.ai.mit.edu> <1991Jan21.055854.14130@rice.edu>
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources (ncoast)
Lines: 28

In article <1991Jan21.055854.14130@rice.edu> jsd@wahoo.rice.edu (Shawn Joel Dube) writes:
>
>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.
	You obviously don't know anything about the Amiga. When any task is
waiting for the keyboard, or the mouse, or anything else, it uses NO time.
It is waiting for a signal to occur, and until one does, and the task
scheduler decides the signal needs to goto that task, that process takes
ZERO time. So in fact, the number cruncher on the Mac would get LESS time,
as it has to execute calls to see if other tasks need to run instead of just
doing it's number crunching, and letting the OS switch tasks when the
crunchers time is up (which is at a USER determined time, NOT just because
the program called a function whose only purpose is to task switch,
as long as there is another task to run, whether the user wanted it to run
or not).
>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.
	You are wrong. An Amiga program can be notified any time just about
any object is changed (a file, a directory, a window, etc.). For example, you
can drag an icon into the icon editor's window while the program is running
and the icon editor will know to edit that icon.


			Dave