Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!imagen!atari!portal!cup.portal.com!Sullivan
From: Sullivan@cup.portal.com (sullivan - segall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: simple multitasking examples
Message-ID: <14660@cup.portal.com>
Date: 15 Feb 89 02:12:59 GMT
References: <3031@ihlpm.ATT.COM> <603NETOPRHM@NCSUVM> <1558@leah.Albany.Edu> <386@antares.UUCP> <1805@cps3xx.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
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>In article <386@antares.UUCP> pnelson@antares.UUCP (Phil Nelson) writes:
>>On my Amiga, I never have to stop what I am doing in order to format disks.
>>On the AT&T PC at work, formatting and backups generally mean wasted time.
>You can also format as many floppies as you 
>have drives on the Amiga. I have done this when I needed to format
>a bunch on floppies at once. It is fast than one at a time,
>but not twice as fast, since the disk controller is not multitasking :-(

Of course the disk controller is multitasking.  (It isn't multiprocessing,
because after all, there is only one piece of hardware.  But there is also
only one cpu, one blitter, one copper, ...)  btw:  The Amiga doesn't really
have a disk controller.  It uses the blitter to encode and decode MFM directly
from the disk.  So you really can't do blitter based anims and format your
floppies at the same time.  But the point of multitasking is that every task
gets to share the hardware.  And you will notice that when formatting two
floppies, the drive select line flips back and forth between the two drives.
(On the Commodore supplied floppy drives, the light won't go out since it
is driven as an OR of the drive select and drive ready lines.  (Should I 
tell you about my kludge for installing a 3.5" floppy drive without any special
hardware?)

                           -Sullivan Segall
_____________________________________________________________

/V\  Sully set the example: to fly without moving.  We shall
 '   learn to soar on wings of thought. And the student will
     surpass the teacher.
To Quote the immortal Socrates: "I drank what?" -Sullivan
_____________________________________________________________

Mail to: ...sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Sullivan or
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