Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!amdahl!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!sdl
From: sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Fuel for the flames!
Message-ID: <34193@linus.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jun 88 00:10:39 GMT
References: <55608@sun.uucp> <7451@swan.ulowell.edu> <170@kesmai.COM>
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Bedford, MA
Lines: 45
In-reply-to: dca@kesmai.COM's message of 9 Jun 88 20:16:45 GMT


In article <170@kesmai.COM> dca@kesmai.COM (David C. Albrecht) writes:

> In article <7451@swan.ulowell.edu>, page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes:
> What the hell are you talking about?  We are comparing the MAC II running
> in Macintosh mode to the Amiga.  You think the MAC II is any more stable?
> Hah!  A runaway process will still stomp the machine on the MAC II just
> like it does on the Amiga.  

In fact, you can trash the Mac/MultiFinder even with "well-behaved"
processes!  The following incident happened to me two weeks ago, with
the Mac SE running MultiFinder I have at work:

I was running MacTerminal and TrafficWatch (a utility to monitor
Appletalk net activity) simultaneously under Multifinder.  As it turns
out, both applications access the same two Mac serial ports.  (No one
warned me about this.)  The result: I totally trashed "Parameter RAM
(PRAM)", causing the Mac to go completely crazy (it wouldn't stop
beeping at me).  Since PRAM apparently gets its power from the
battery, even turning off the Mac didn't fix the problem!  There is a
"back door" which Mac programmers know about to zap the PRAM, but
since I'm not a Mac programmer, I was stymied until I called the
vendor of TrafficWatch (Farallon), who helped me rebuild PRAM.  They
also told me that checking whether two Mac applications access the
same ports under Multifinder is extremely difficult.

I have owned an Amiga since February 1986, and I have never had it
fail so spectacularly on me.

I think all the people who continually flame AmigaDOS ("no resource
tracking," etc.) should try living with MultiFinder on a Mac for a
while.  


Steven Litvintchouk
MITRE Corporation
Burlington Road
Bedford, MA  01730

Fone:  (617)271-7753
ARPA:  sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa
UUCP:  ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,mit-eddie,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl

	"Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to
	 conquer the world."  -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.