Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!thorin!washington!certain
From: certain@washington.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Certain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: System programming for the Apple II (preferably the IIe)
Message-ID: <12444@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 7 Mar 90 01:48:00 GMT
References: <6673@hydra.gatech.EDU> <7368@latcs1.oz.au>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: certain@washington.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Certain)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 25

In article <7368@latcs1.oz.au> stephens@latcs1.oz.au (Philip J Stephens) writes:
>   First of all, remember that Unix is multitasking, whereas the Apple IIe is
>not!  You'd have to modify the C sources quite drastically to get a single
>user version capable of running on an Apple.  Either that, or get your hands
>on one that isn't multitasking.

I'm not sure that I believe that.  The paging problem definitely exists,
but isn't it a function of the OS, not the machine, that determines
multitasking capabilites?  The Mac under MacOS doesn't have true
multitasking abilities, but it does under A/UX.  I realize that we're
talking about a much less powerful machine here, but I think that
the posibility of multitasking isn't really a problem; however, like
you said, paging is.

I'm not really sure what you mean about disk I/O being a problem.  If
you mean that the Apple II doesn't have DMA, this is true, but neither
does the Mac (which is why A/UX is painfully slow....well, that and many
other reasons).

I'm not doubting that UNIX under an Apple II or any 6502 machine would
be fairly slow and poor, I'm just wondering if multitasking capabilities
is a function of machine disign.

Andrew Certain
certain@cs.unc.edu