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From: tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Tony Reynolds)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Questions about ST hw/sw upgrades
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.201001.18669@cs.olemiss.edu>
Date: 12 Mar 91 20:10:01 GMT
References: <11885@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <1820@mwca.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.olemiss.edu
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Lines: 56

In article <1820@mwca.UUCP> bill@mwca.UUCP (Bill Sheppard) writes:
>In article <11885@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> kiki@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jack W. Wine) writes:
> [stuff about SST and the GEOS port deleted]

>Geos isn't actually an OS, it is a graphical environment, just as GEM is
>to TOS.  I suspect, however, that you could find someone to port Geos to
>the 68K for 50,000 * $2, let alone $20!  However, no existing programs
>would look any different - programs have to be written especially to take
>advantage of the environment, just as a non-Windows program on an MS-DOS
>machine looks no different when run under Windows or plain MS-DOS.

Flame ON!

All flames are C-64 specific--excuse my ignorance of PC Geos.

Geos is a piece of crap Operating System.  I know.  I had the priviledge
of writing Spelunker, one of the first non-Berkeley Softworks DAs for
Geos.  It is a true OS.  It has some equivalent multi-tasking features to
GEM, id est DAs can run on clock-ticks, message passing is done for
redraws, and a few other things.

My greatest complaint about Geos-64 and B.S. is that the PRM sucked!
There were more spelling and punctuation errors in it than in a
typical post some illiterate third-grader!  Some functions listed in
the index were not even documented in the main body of the PRM.  Nowhere
in the old PRM does it mention that DAs are the same as dialog boxes,
but it does say that you can't have two Dialog Boxes on the screen at
once.  I found out the hard way about this one!

Development tools at the time sucked, too.  I had to use the Commodore
Assembler, because it was similar in style to the B.S. assembler. The
Commodore assembler places an (8-character?) limit on the length of 
symbols so the Berkely symbol names had to be truncated or renamed.
I had to use a disk-editor to change the file types and allow the
Geos info sectors to be attached to the DA itself.  A typical turn on
the source code took 15-17 minutes: re-write,assemble,edit-disk, run,
fail, think.

Spelunker is also my pet peeve against share-ware.  I uploaded the
program, its SOURCE, the assembly include files, the methods, and
GeoWrite Docs to Quantum Link.  I asked for $3.00, to be sent to
a starving student.  NOT ONE DIME, NOT A FLIPPING DIME, has been
received.  Someone even had the NERVE to FIX the source code, and
then say this person could not get in touch with me!  MY ADDRESS
WAS IN THE SOURCE CODE!  IT COMES UP DURING ASSEMBLY!  So, every
program I writen and released to the public since then has been
for Free-- I don't wanna get my hopes up!  Thanks, Simon Poole.

Flame OFF!

This .sig file is completely original, including many of the spelling errors.
I don't think anybody has one quite like it, and if they do, you can send
comments to:tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu,or call me at (601)232-7402. So there.


\\\\Tony\Reynolds\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\Ride\the\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\