Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!codas!burl!clyde!watmath!watdcsu!ttims
From: ttims@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Tracy Tims)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Micro RTX Description (discussion, predictions)
Message-ID: <4518@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 88 18:09:44 GMT
References: <169@bdt.UUCP>
Reply-To: ttims@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Tracy Tims)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 70
Keywords: RTX MULTITASKING

Your RTX system sounds really, really nice.  (I wrote my own mini message
passing kernel for the Atari, but it has only a small fraction of the power
of yours.)

So, considering that it exists, and that it sounds like it's in good taste,
technically speaking:

	Why isn't Atari licensing it from you and distributing it
	with all their machines?

It sounds like a better software system than they will ever be able to design
and distribute.  Are they holding out because they think they can do better?
Is their management unable to appreciate the future marketing value of a
message passing multitasking operating system (especially in a networked
environment)?  Are they simply unaware of it?  Do they take the point of view
(regrettably common) that they can do economically better by producing a poor
product for less money?

Would you accept a binary licensing fee of say, 15 dollars (US) per copy for
distribution with every Atari ST?  If Atari was willing to simply pass this
fee onto each consumer by raising the system cost by 15 dollars would this
impact hardware sales in a meaningful way?  (What would be a more optimal
licensing fee?)  Consumers, would you pay 15 dollars more for an Atari with
RTX built in?

If it was distributed (and became the new Atari operating system standard)
would this encourage more sophisticated software development for the machine,
and would this increase the market for the hardware (and for the RTX)?  Is
it possible that RTX could add more reliability to stock TOS?

*If* your RTX would port nicely to a system with an MMU, I'd say it sounds like
it could be the software salvation of TOS and the whole ST line.

I don't think there are any medium term prospects for personal computers that
are not addressing the memory protection/multitasking/software reliability
problems.  The only primitive operating system that will survive will be MSDOS.
The workstation manufacturers are showing cheaper and cheaper products that
have worlds more functionality and reliability that current personal computers.
More and more people are coming to understand the value of these types of
machines and (like me) will demand that value in their personal computers.

There will be two choices for decent operating systems:  UNIX, and anything
else that implements the minimum technical niceties.  I'm not saying that UNIX
is the best, or even desirable.  It exists, and it can be ported and it can
work.  The biggest obstacle to the popular acceptance of UNIX systems (with
windowing) is the high, high cost of the application and system software.
There is good application software out there for workstations:  it would never
sell in the mass market unless the prices dropped by a factor of 10.

It's in this niche that "other decent operating systems" will fit.  With
foresight and planning, cheaper operating systems and software could be
highly competitive (in terms of price/(functionality+reliability)) with
more sophisticated workstations.  Apple seems to have no problem understanding
this.  Foresight and planning means the development of RELIABLE and SECURE
hardware and software.  I think there is a better chance (technically) that
the Atari could evolve into the budget workstation that the Apple.  The
Atari hardware and software is less crufty and cast-in-concrete than Mac
hardware and software.  (This is mostly because the software is more loosely
organized, and because the hardware is cleaner.)

It think it would be very difficult to produce a Mac which one could leave
turned on for large periods of time, and do useful work on, without being
worried about memory corruption.  I think that with intelligence and taste,
TOS (with RTX?) could be made to operate reliably in a memory protected
environment.

Reliability and functionality are the two things which sell machines.  A user
needs *both* to get work done.

Tracy Tims