Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:28452 comp.sys.amiga:33452
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!amiga!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs AmigaDOS
Message-ID: <6793@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 18:31:56 GMT
References: <5664@microsoft.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 71

in article <5664@microsoft.UUCP>, t-stephp@microsoft.UUCP (Stephen Poole) says:
> Xref: cbmvax comp.sys.ibm.pc:32990 comp.sys.amiga:36021

> I am certainly no big Windows fan and am not defending it.  You, however,
> completely missed the point.  Windows is a more intelligent OS in that it
> demand loads code and resources.  In terms of memory management in general
> it certainly qualifies as a second-generation PC operating system,
> regardless of other problems it may have.  Overlays on the Amiga are a
> laughable substitute for VM or demand loading.

Amiga shared libraries, fonts, and device drivers are all demand-loaded.  Any
more sophisticated form of demand loading should be, IMHO, based on a hardware
driven virtual memory manager.  If you haven't isolated the things that are
to be loaded on demand, you're going to be pretty inefficient it would seem.
And without any obvious indication of useage, such as in an Amiga device or
font, or a VM manager's page count tags, the system isn't going to know enough
to unload stuff that hasn't been recently used, at least not without some 
serious software overhead.  

Of course, I have yet to hear complaints about OS/2 being too fast...

> That's a ridiculous question.  What do you expect the operating system to
> do, page in the disk drivers from virtual memory when it needs to access
> the disk?  Kind of a chicken and egg situation, eh?  Drivers and the OS/2
> kernel are bootstrapped and remain resident for obvious reasons.  

You certainly need to have the driver you're booting the system from around 
before you boot the system.  But obviously, any driver that gets loaded from
that boot volume need only be loaded when that driver is actually accessed.
The Amiga system has demand loaded device drivers -- are you sure OS/2 doesn't?
Sounds pretty primitive if it doesn't.  Next thing you're going to be letting
me that an OS/2 machine has to be put though some expert-level configuration
process to add or possibly even remove a device or memory board.  

> The dynamic linking capabilities of OS/2, however, allow chunks of code to 
> be shared between applications with no duplication in memory.  DynLink 
> libraries are one of the major advantages of OS/2 over more primitive PC 
> operating systems (meaning PC in the generic sense).  

Of course they are.  We know.  We've had demand-loaded shared libraries since
the Amiga OS first was released in 1985.  It's a great idea.

> I have been using OS/2 for about nine months now, and can honestly say
> that it is a tremendous pleasure to use.  

That's really the bottom line.  If you like it, you'll use it, tell your 
friends, and the thing may be successful.  With IBM behind, it might be
anyway.

> I totally dig  having email running all the time and checking for new 
> messages, having two compilations running, having my machine set up as a 
> network server (a piece of cake, and something that can be done at any time 
> without even rebooting), all while I'm using Word or a telecommunications
> program and formatting a floppy.  And that's on a 4.6M machine WITH
> the DOS box enabled.  That strikes me as being pretty good resource
> management.

It's a good thing that IBM-world folks, or at least some of 'em, are going to
start seeing what a real multitasking OS can do for them.  We Amigaoids have
been shouting this for years, and the typical reaction from a PClone user was,
"I won't ever need multitasking, all I want is a few pop-up programs/DAs/
whateveryacallems".  I've had several terminal programs, several compilations,
a text editor or two, floppy formats, the usual 5 or 10 utility things that 
run in the background, all running on my Amiga, all at once for a long, long
time.  Only with about 1/2 that memory...

> -- Stephen D. Poole -- t-stephp@microsoft.UUCP -- Mac II Fanatic --
-- 
Dave Haynie  "The 32 Bit Guy"     Commodore-Amiga  "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: D-DAVE H     BIX: hazy
              Amiga -- It's not just a job, it's an obsession