Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: Amiga basher Message-ID: <1991Jun16.170632.22749@sugar.hackercorp.com> Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX References: <1991Jun13.065150.3529@cs.mcgill.ca> <1991Jun14.033035.21572@daimi.aau.dk> <56@ryptyde.UUCP> Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1991 17:06:32 GMT In article <56@ryptyde.UUCP> dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy) writes: > Are you saying the Macintosh cannot multitask? Wake up and smell the toast > burning, man! The Macintosh cannot multitask well enough to do things that are second nature to Amiga users. Try running anything significant on a Mac in the background and watch interactive response go to hell. I'm now running a mandelbrot set generator at -1 priority. It's getting almost 100% of the CPU, but because the term program I'm using gets its CPU time guaranteed when it needs it by the scheduling algorithm I can't even tell it's running. I'm also formatting a floppy. Still no problems. You just can't *do* that on a Mac. Any Mac. I've been doing it since I got my Amiga 1000 years ago. An operating system is basically a resource allocator. The Mac operating system does not allocate CPU time at all, it waits for each program to give up its share. Programs that want to provide good interactive response have to busy-wait, so they use up CPU time even when idle. And every applications programmer has the responsibility of duplicating all sorts of operating system code in the core of his program. Here's the tasks running on my 3000 right now. If this was a Mac, it'd be dead in the water. According to PM, I have 0% idle time. And as far as interactive response goes, I can't even detect that anything's going on. ADDRESS Q PRI WAITSIG TYPE NAME 7f34590 W 0 80001000 CLI 2 Background Process 7f45b90 W 4 c0000000 PROCESS RexxMaster 7f5db88 W 0 e3149000 CLI 3 Background Process 7f5ca98 W 0 2000 PROCESS FMS-Dummy 7f2e040 W 0 10 PROCESS ramlib 7f4c6e8 W 1 c0000000 TASK 7f58eb0 W 10 40000100 PROCESS FF0 9aad0 W 0 100 PROCESS SYS:System/CLI 7f0e342 W 0 f0000000 TASK console.device 7f17448 W 10 40000100 PROCESS DF0 7f19b80 W 10 40000100 PROCESS DF2 7f226e8 W 10 40000100 PROCESS Peter 7f28520 W 10 40000100 PROCESS Stephanie 7f77248 W 1 c0000000 CLI 4 Workbench 7f0fbc8 W 5 300 TASK trackdisk.device 7f1c0e8 W 5 300 TASK trackdisk.device 7f74dc0 W 0 f1000000 PROCESS JR-Comm 7f449d8 W 0 f8000000 TASK jrcomm-clock 7f116b0 W 10 40000100 PROCESS WB_2.x 7f0afd0 W 12 c0000000 TASK SCSI bus handler 7f0a3f8 W 11 e0000000 TASK scsi.device 7f08af2 W 20 c0000000 TASK input.device 7f1c698 W 10 40000100 PROCESS Work 7f33c38 W 0 c0000100 PROCESS RAM 99900 W 5 100 PROCESS CON 72f28 R -1 20 PROCESS Mandel (26 jobs 1 ready) > NeXT has had KILLER color for a while now (full 32-bit, the last byte used > for transparency/reflectance). And with a price to match. The cheapest NeXT hardware is priced higher than any Amiga. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' . 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"