Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!um-math!hyc From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Atari-bashing (was Re: Looking for an Evangelist) Message-ID: <538@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> Date: 6 Jan 89 00:10:30 GMT References: <474@ur-cc.UUCP> <6847@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <12835@cup.portal.com> <428@ho7cad.ATT.COM> <3216@sugar.uu.net> Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor Lines: 122 UUCP-Path: {mailrus,umix}!um-math!hyc In article <3216@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Oh yes, let's get some terms straight. > > Amiga ST Mac IBM > >User Workbench GEM Desktop Finder COMMAND.COM >interface or >(shell) CLI Fair enough, though you don't list "third party" here for the ST. Gulam is very powerful, and there's also the CRAFT programming environment. > >User Intuition GEM Toolbox none >interface >(library) > >File system AmigaDOS CP/M-68K MacOS MS-DOS Actually, I'd say the ST filesystem looks identical to MS-DOS. I suppose we can let that slide, since MS-DOS evolved from CP/M anyway... > >Operating Amiga EXEC none none none >system >(kernel) You're being somewhat of a bigot here. An operating system manages system resources on behalf of a user, as a most basic definition. Since all of these machines have, at the very least, code to allocate memory, control access to physical devices, etc., then by definition they do have operating systems, however limited or primitive. The ST has somewhat more comprehensive a system than either the Mac or PC, since it also utilizes memory protection and tries to maintain a distinction between user and supervisor mode. I don't know enough about the Amiga to compare, though it obviously must also support these features or else the much-crowed-about inherent multitasking would be a crock. > >Library Amiga EXEC none Resource none >manager manager Please define library manager. I've seen the Mac resource manager. It's an interesting idea, but intolerably slow. I suppose it corresponds to the Apollo library manager, or MACH's shared libraries. Dynamic linking is definitely a nice thing. There's a "third party" PD package that implements this on the ST, which seems to do the trick very nicely. As such, I find this "none" entry for the ST to also be incorrect. > >Operating Libraries D/As D/As TSRs >system Drivers Resources >extensions Handlers You fail to mention MSDOS device drivers. Shame shame shame. TOS also allows for TSRs, which is basically what device drivers are. Just because the folks at Atari aren't pointing things out to your attention doesn't mean they don't exist. In this case, I think your own words are somewhat appropriate - "programming an ST is like programming a PC." The same techniques, or ideas at least, apply. I suppose, before going much further, you should also define your terms some more - what do you mean by "libraries, drivers, and handlers"? I'm assuming you're using terms specific to Amiga parlance, and not just the usual meanings of "device driver," in which case I would say "driver" and "handler" were synonymous. > >Multitasking Inherent Third party, Multifinder Windows > partial. Switcher Third party, > partial. This would follow, given your assertion that the Amiga has an operating system and none of the other machines do, since multi-tasking is a feature of an operating system. However, your entries here would tend to conflict with the previous entry. Too bad. Also, the ST operating system is really more than you would lead others to believe. It's called GEMDOS, after all, to imply that the graphics environment aspect is really intrinsic to the system as a whole. And though the GEM desktop is simply a user interface, the Graphics Envuironment Manager is really a part of the operating system, and performs ("partial") multitasking management. Inherently. I grant you that it's very limited, but it provides most of the features one would expect from a full multi-user multitasking system, including IPC primitives and job control. Not to say that things are all perfect or wonderful in the ST world, but they're certainly as crippled as you make things sound. There's a lot of delay loops in TOS that would have to be rewritten before it could handle multitasking more flexibly. There are lots of things I'd like it to do that it doesn't, but it's not impossible to implement these by oneself. Finally, much of this is only of great import to a hacker. An application user doesn't care if GEM is the operating system or if a mouse click will generate an asynchronous interrupt to resume a suspended task. And for programming, there are few systems I've seen that provide a more powerful and flexible environment. Sure, it irks me that I can't pop up Uniterm while I'm compiling something. Big deal, it doesn't take very long to compile stuff anyway. Fast filesystems are nice that way. That's also an interesting point you fail to summarize in your table - the ST and PC disk I/O are probably the fastest around. I'd venture to say the Amigas comes in next, and the Mac last, though the Mac may very well be faster for all I know. (I *know*, for a fact that the ST disk I/O is faster than the Amigas. Even with identical devices, like a freshly formatted Quantum 80S.) Even my Sun 3-260 with SMD disk controller is hard pressed to deliver the same kind of performance. (On second thought, no, it zips along pretty well too.) Speed is something that's more commonly talked about, true? I mean, speed is noticed by anyone, hacker or application user. And while an ST may not be faster than an AT clone with 20MHz 80286 installed, it's easily the fastest of the three (ST, Mac, Amiga). I suppose I could spend the bucks for an Amiga 2000 with 68020, but I'd still be stuck with a machine with slow disks... (And when you're compiling code, it's disk speed that matters, unless you happen to be using Turbo C or something...) >-- >Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. >...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U` Sorry for the length... -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems