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From: kurt@fluke.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Networking Amigas + MMU's
Message-ID: <704@dragon.tc.fluke.COM>
Date: Tue, 7-Apr-87 12:00:55 EST
Article-I.D.: dragon.704
Posted: Tue Apr  7 12:00:55 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Apr-87 04:37:59 EST
References: <8704050436.AA24154@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 18

Well we BETTER FIGURE OUT how to make messages work over a network.  

The next "innovation" in personal computers is going to be protected,
virtual memory machines.  On such a machine a runaway program will have
little chance to kill the kernal, and the machine will be expected to run
reliably for many consecutive days.  One of the things you have to get used
to in virtual memory environments is that you can't easily share memory
between processes.  Right now AmigaDOS cheats -- it passes pointers to
memory around in messages.  To fix things either all messages will have
to exist in a universally accessible memory partition (dangerous), or
the memory management will have to allow pairs (or groups?) of processes to
share regions of memory (complex) or messages will have to be copied into
the receiving process's memory space (expensive?). 

On networks, you are, of course, pretty much limited to the third choice.  
I think it is time to decide of AmigaDOS can be modified to deal with
virtual memory and/or networking.  If not, it is a very bad sign for the
amiga.