Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uwm.edu!uwvax!titanic.cs.wisc.edu!tonyrich From: tonyrich@titanic.cs.wisc.edu (Anthony Rich) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: Turning off time slices in S7 Message-ID: <1991May31.030742.10637@spool.cs.wisc.edu> Date: 31 May 91 03:07:42 GMT References: Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu (The News) Distribution: comp Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept Lines: 25 Nick B. Triantos writes: >I was thinking...Since S7 is always MultiFinder, aren't apps such as Solarian, >and other games, and many other things which are heavily dependent on timing >going to suffer? Yeah, I think so. Color Tetris under system 7.0 got jerky on my plain old Mac II after I installed SuperClock 3.9 -- so I dumped SuperClock. :( Even with without SuperClock installed, Tetris is slightly slower and less responsive under 7.0 than it was under 6.0.5 and MultiFinder. I think the added features of System 7 are starting to push the limits of what the lower-end Mac hardware (anything less than a 68030?) can support without noticeable delays. Small delays are only annoying in many situations, but they can spoil real-time programs like arcade games. (Hmmm...so we have to buy a IIfx to play games, is that it? What a marketing strategy...! ;^) So what do System 7 users do to get "Finder-only" performance for apps that need it? We can still reboot with Finder and 6.0.x, of course, but I don't think Apple intends that we keep doing that. (I can just hear the snickers from the DOS/Windows camp: "How many reboots does it take to run a game on a Mac?", etc., etc.) What is needed is a "Single App Mode" toggle that would temporarily turn off much of the System 7 overhead and allow only one app to run while still booted under System 7. I'll bet it wouldn't be an easy thing to implement, though.