Xref: utzoo comp.sys.atari.st:6634 comp.sys.amiga:12136
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!ems!nis!stag!trb
From: trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Multi-tasking? A nightmare...
Message-ID: <289@stag.UUCP>
Date: 24 Dec 87 16:55:39 GMT
References: <2027@bath63.ux63.bath.ac.uk> <22237@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <8155@prls.UUCP> <7909@e.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey )
Organization: Mindtools ST Access Group, Plymouth, MN
Lines: 78

In article <7909@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) writes:
>In article <8155@prls.UUCP> gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner) writes:
>>I'm still waiting to see if someone can come up with a use for TRUE
>>multitasking that a typical home user would find very handy but that
>>cannot be satisfied by a simple 'carousel' approach. There probably
>>are some, especially with message-passing, etc., but none have been
>>posted yet (except for people waiting for their compilers to finish --
>>they just need faster integrated compilers, though :)

Agreed...even my worst case program (hdscan) takes less than a minute
to compile, so I rarely even have the urge to pop it into the
background...

> ... And yes, I know that background print spooler gadgets can
>run on single task DOS's ... I've seen 'em in CP/M, RT-11, Mess-DOS,
>and many many others.  But I've never been convinced that they
>ever ran cleanly.

???Why not??? I have less trouble with the automatic print spoolers on
my PC clone and ST than I do on the Unix boxes at work. I can
prioritize jobs, edit stuff in the queue, etc on the ST version, but
those hacks are mostly fluff and rarely used...besides, I have seen
those handy little standalone print spoolers going for under $50
nowadays, so that may be a better solution in the long run...

>I'm thinking ahead some time into the future when we'll have
>ISDN running everywhere ... In order to handle network communications
>cleanly we'll need to have multi-tasking.

Umm, by the time we have ISDN running everywhere, our current
computers will probably be dust. By then, most of us will probably be
running some variant of Unix on our machines if we want to properly
utilize ISDN (i.e. we will have BIG drives, some form of USENET access
...which I can't quite picture even two years from now, since we are
running about 28MBytes of messages/week now..., very high speed
modems, etc.)

>[There are] also things like mail daemons
>and such that recieve e-mail while you're asleep (or away
>or whatever).

UUPC seems to work fine on the ST and I have several STadel (ST
citadel) boards that poll my Unix box every couple of hours for uucp
mail and the comp.sys.atari.st sections. I am sure there are a lot of
Amiga systems doing the same (I recall that UUPC came out for the
Amiga and Citadel is also running on the Amiga).

>For right now?  Well, how about killing run-away processes?

On the ST OS-9 or the Multi-tasking C shell has the standard ability
to do this...And on the Amiga or the ST, you can always hit reset to
kill everything, but still keep the things that were out on RAM
drives...(I used this feature a lot on both the Amiga and the ST in
the early days of using C compilers that were released too soon.)

I agree somewhat with Dave Meile on this discussion/argument. In the
long run, the average user of a popular computer is not the 'BBS'-type
or a person that needs anything more than a few utilities in the
form of desk accessories on top of an application. Unfortunately, the
IBM PC and the Mac have gained the 'average' user market, to date.
Those of us with Amiga's and Atari ST's are either technical enough to
appreciate and use the special features of the respective computer, or
we had very, very persuasive friends who convinced us that the
Amiga/ST was the best computer. The 'average' user is still the person
that just buys a Mac or PC for a very specific purpose (usually for
writing memos or doing spreadsheets in a business environment). They
may run Lightning/Thunder (real time spelling checkers on the PC/ST)
in a pseudo background manner, and have a ton of desk accessories or
pop up tools, but they rarely go in for the increased complexity that
a multi-tasking environment like DesqView offers on the PC. Even the
carrousel approach (there, I just multi-tasked and asked my wife for
a spelling check...it can also be spelled carousel) is somewhat
confusing to people, but I have seen secretaries fall in love with the
carrousel programs on the Mac and the ST...although not on the PC version
for some reason.

  -Todd Burkey
   trb@stag.UUCP