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From: goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Tick-tick-tick-CRASH! is not dead in TOS 1.4
Message-ID: <8040@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 2 Feb 90 15:00:38 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Lines: 41


In article <2015@atari.UUCP>, kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) writes...
>grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) writes:
> 
>| GST say it's something inside TOS (or GEMDOS or whatever layer
>| it might be), so I was rather hoping the problem might go away with TOS
>| 1.4. 
> 
>Now why doesn't that surprise me?  Not to bash GST, but I have found
>that a lot of problems similar to this are a result of bad programming
>practices.  Not intentional, but just because the developer wasn't
>aware of some restriction or another.  It's all too easy to blame TOS.
  ...
no fair, Ken, it's not GST's problem.

About a year ago I posted this same problem with Word Perfect Atari.
It too drops into "slow mode" now and then, when it eats up the keyboard 
buffer about one key every few seconds, treats the screen as if the 
mouse button were stuck down, and if you're lucky lets you (slowly!)
request a save before you have to reboot.

Word Perfect Corp. says it's a problem with TOS.  The net-consensus was
that it's a problem with TOS.  It occurs in numerous GEM programs, such
as Word Perfect and 1ST_WORD+.  It is VERY frustrating, and is one of 
the main reasons I bought a PClone recently!  MS-DOSs eats it raw but
at least it gets debugged.

It takes maybe half an hour to an hour running Word Perfect to get the 
bug, though I'm sure it would take a lot longer if somebody were trying 
to debug it... Now would anyone from Atari like to try to FIX it? 

>While you're at it, don't forget to sprinkle the chicken's blood on the
>keyboard and dance about, chanting at the monitor.

Funny, Ken, but that does seem to be about the right way to keep an 
application running on the ST!
---
Fred R. Goldstein   goldstein@carafe.enet.dec.com 
                 or goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com
                    voice:  +1 508 486 7388 
(Opinions are the author's own.  Sharing requires permission.)