Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!unido!fauern!faui43.informatik.uni-erlangen.de!lsmichae
From: lsmichae@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Lars Michael )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Multitasking
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.151210.4010@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Date: 11 Feb 91 15:12:10 GMT
References: <74457@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Organization: CSD., University of Erlangen, Germany
Lines: 55

selick@bucsf.bu.edu (Steven Selick) writes:

>In response to all of the talk about amigas being 'true' multitasking
>machines and such, I just thought I'd point out that no matter how you
>slice it, a single microprocessor can only handle one command at a time.
>Depending on the methods you choose to do your application switching,
>you can buffer i/o and such to maximize your productivity, but you still
>are performing one function on the processor at any given clock tick. 

I really agree with you, *but* a multitasking system slices one second
so all non-blocked processes get one or more slices of time. This is
transparent for the user, so he may think he has *all* his processes 
running.

Actually multitasking can help you e.g. in programming. Lets compare:

Monotasking:
	You write some source with the editor, leave the editor, compile,
	debug, find an error and start the editor again. Each application
	has to be left before the next can run.

Multitasking:
	Load all applications before use, and switch (without loading)
	only to the one you wanna use. Indeed this is faster !
	

>Although I am relatively upset at the low priority given to midi and
>such musical applications on the net, I must agree with the amiga user
>that one of the main features of the st is its built in midi port and 
>relative low cost, making it ideal for the struggling musician (like
>myself) but I must say that I have USED the 'big' sequencers on the
>mac, and I have toyed with amiga/ibm sequencers in the store, and none 
>has come close to Notator on the ST. The ST is a wonderful machine for
>the price, and I was happy enough with my 1040st to upgrade to an STE
>(mainly for the blitter chip, tos 1.6, and memory upgrade, but what else
>is there?) 

What else? The STE has:

	hardware scrolling horizontal and vertical
	four Joystick ports (plus two internal ports ?)
	stereo digital sound
	and some features which I don't know.

								Lars

PS.:
	I'm an enthusiastic ST-User.

+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------+
|  Lars Michael                     |    | | |                         |
|  lsmichae@faui43.uni-erlangen.de  |    | | |   "Down with ATARI,     |
+-----------------------------------+   /  |  \   Long live the ST !"  |
|  "May the Schwartz be with you!"  |  /   |   \                       |
+-----------------------------------+----------------------------------+