Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!bdt!david From: david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Micro RTX Description (discussion, predictions) Message-ID: <177@bdt.UUCP> Date: 14 Mar 88 19:38:31 GMT References: <169@bdt.UUCP> <4518@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> Reply-To: david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) Organization: Beckemeyer Development Tools, Oakland, CA Lines: 57 Keywords: RTX MULTITASKING In article <4518@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> ttims@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (Tracy Tims) writes: >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? Good question. I'm sorry but I don't have the answer. It seems to make perfectly goo dbusiness sense to me. >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? Guess what. The offical published binary re-distribution fee for Micro RTX is even less - just $10 per copy! This is supposed to be per-product, but theoretically (and legitimately) Atari could develop a simple application that used RTX (hello world for that matter) and distribute it with every ST for just $10 per copy royalty! >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? Well we have developed large multi-user business applications based on RTX. These systems run multi-user 24 hrs. a day. The internal architecture of these systems is pretty sophisticated: several communicating processes, network and file-system servers, multiplexing device drivers, protocol drivers, hundreds of files open simultaneousaly (try that with plain old TOS!). Once the software is debugged, they simply don't crash, even with hundreds of messages flying around between CPUs, and lot's of disk activity. It is possible to crash a system that has no hardware protection if you try; but it is also possible to develop highly robust, reliable, sophisticated software applications with RTX. I know becuase I have done it! It works. Anybody that says that it cannot be done is either inept or lying. With regular TOS we can't even run our system single-user, becuase TOS has problems handling the number of files, and has memory allocation problems. When we run under RTX the problems go away. RTX can, of course, present new problems to programs that were poorly designed. For example, sometimes programs "over-ride" TOS to overcome bugs, and these types of programs may have problems with RTX. But with RTX the system calls work, and there's more of them, so you can produce "clean" reliable applications. -- David Beckemeyer | "To understand ranch lingo all yuh Beckemeyer Development Tools | have to do is to know in advance what 478 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland, CA 94610 | the other feller means an' then pay UUCP: ...!ihnp4!hoptoad!bdt!david | no attention to what he says"