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From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac Multitasking? Hee-hee!
Message-ID: <7115@g.ms.uky.edu>
Date: Tue, 18-Aug-87 01:04:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: g.7115
Posted: Tue Aug 18 01:04:33 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Aug-87 04:35:32 EDT
References: <6565@eddie.MIT.EDU> <2742@hoptoad.uucp> <3638@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <2758@hoptoad.uucp> <4537@videovax.Tek.COM>
Reply-To: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Organization: The Leaning Tower of Patterson Office @ The Univ. of KY
Lines: 32
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:7511 comp.sys.mac:5653

In article <4537@videovax.Tek.COM> stever@videovax.Tek.COM (Steven E. Rice, P.E.) writes:
>        % kermit -k | uudecode | uncompress | tar xvf -
>
>The time savings from eliminating three enormous writes to disk and three
>correspondingly enormous reads from disk are tremendous.  Also, on small
>systems, there may not be enough mass storage to hold all the intermediate
>forms at once.

Steve missed another advantage of this.  While one or more of these
programs is waiting on I/O, another can be using the CPU.  Thus one
of the major advantages of multitasking.  Two non-cpu bound programs
run simultaneously use less real time than if they are run serially.
Using resources in parallel is more efficient.  Since the amiga
doesn't have VM, you're not going to have many thrashing problems.
I do wish they'd sort floppy accesses.  The poor floppy beats itself
to death when two processes try to use it at the same time.

Anyone that says "Multitasking would not be useful on a Mac anyway"
has obviously not used an Amiga for any length of time!  It's awfully
nice to be able to unarc and look through sources while the transfer
of another is going on.  And all the while, a 24 hour raytrace is
making good use of those extra cpu cycles.  I do it all the time.
Of course, if you never have because your computer can't do it, you
probably don't know what you're missing.

Vive la Amiga!


-- 
--  Sean Casey                    sean@ms.uky.edu,    {uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!sean
--  (the Empire guy)              sean@ms.uky.csnet,  sean@UKMA.BITNET
--  "I...am a shrubber..."  -- Roger the Shrubber