Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!ukma!rutgers!apple!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Apple System 7.0 [ and some 1.4 suggestions ]
Message-ID: <287@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 13 May 89 16:05:58 GMT
References: <17148@usc.edu> <24279@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <18268@cup.portal.com> <17183@usc.edu> <21814@srcsip.UUCP> <5847@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 35

In article <5847@cs.Buffalo.EDU> ugkamins@sunybcs.UUCP (John Kaminski) writes:
>on some other process "handing me" the processor.  One blemish of the Amiga is
>that it provides Enable(), Disable(), Permit(), and Forbid().  Any process
>utilizing these falls into the same class as Multifinder.  R U listening,

NO! WRONG!!! (oops, sorry about that, I just got excited :-)

Actually, any system that provides these functions is a "real time operating
system". These calls are indispensible in such an environment. And
regardless of what other great features are provided, they'll always
be necessary for some things in real time systems. For one thing, you
can (temporarily, one hopes) disable the preemptive scheduling people
are complaining about; thus the Amiga provides a superset of what e.g.
the Mac can do.

For another thing, sometimes it's important to write an interrupt handler,
and again this level of control is essential. One of the wonders of the
Amiga is that, if necessary, you can do this, and you don't have to
have OS source code, or even have to relink OS object files, in order
to add it. Granted such power can be problematic, but if you don't have
it, you don't have a real time OS. And for some things you just *have*
to have a real time OS.

>CATS guys?  Provide access functions to the programs that do this, to do
>what those programs do, which is generally access to system structures any-
>way.

Yes, that would be nice. It would remove *some* (but not all) of the
need for the calls you disparaged.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug	doug@xdos.com
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary

"Of course, I'm no rocket scientist" -- Randell Jesup, Capt. Boinger Corps