Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AECLCR.BITNET!01659
From: 01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: My last comments about ST multitasking
Message-ID: <8908160401.AA01009@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 Aug 89 04:01:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29

I wish that some of the people who read and reply to net postings would
actually take the time to understand what they have read. As an example,
one reply about my original posting about MT on the ST went on-and-on
about the move towards MT in the industry; hey!, I was NOT against MT, just
puzzled why anyone would want it on a system like an 68000 at 8 MHz. In
addition, so many postings came back giving examples of MT when they were
just glorified task switching examples.

MT to me means doing several CPU intensive jobs at the same time. It's not
the ability to format a disk while you type in your word processor. It's
not switching out of some game to do some spreadsheet work. It's not
swapping data between painting programs. Those are all task switching examples.

MT is controlling some lab equipment while at the same time several
users log on and do word processing and someone else is generating a database
report. Look, I can format floppies from within all my ST applications, I
can run a word processor, a spreadsheet and a painting program at the same
time and switch between them. I can ask REVOLVER to 'rollout' a memory
partition to disk. BUT, when I want to crank out dbMAN reports from my
databases (one is almost 4 megabytes), I don't want to slow down my 68000
by using another application at all. I want the dbMAN stuff out asap.

I reitierate, I am not anti-multitasking and I this is not a case of sour
grapes (that's for you Amiga guys). I'll just wait until I can afford a
machine that's got the guts to do real multitasking.

Anybody understand the following?

NO IFBMS      NO AMIFGAS       NO MFACS       NO WFAY