Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!joe From: joe@cbmvax.UUCP (Joe O'Hara - QA) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Multitasking on the ST Message-ID: <7664@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 15 Aug 89 04:18:08 GMT References: <8908021826.AA05333@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <15627@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1989Aug4.173233.8259@sj.ate.slb.com> <376@eagle.wesleyan.edu> <63138@linus.UUCP> <29201@pbhya.PacBell.COM> Reply-To: joe@cbmvax.UUCP (Joe O'Hara - QA) Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 23 In article <29201@pbhya.PacBell.COM> dbsuther@PacBell.COM (Daniel B. Suthers) writes: >After reading this a question popped into my head. If you are downloading in >the back ground (it seems the most popular multi-task task) and running a >action game in the foreground, do you set the download process to the >highest priority to avoid losing data or do you just put up with longer >download times and connect times so your joy-stick will be responsive? Believe it or not, the answer is neither. The actual I/O is processed by device drivers, in these examples the serial device and the gameport device. The drivers have higher-than-standard priorities. In the download situation, received characters are stored in a buffer until the application program gains control and "reads" them (burst them into the program). The joy-stick action results in events which are passed to the game program as messages. Consequently, the game program could be given higher priority if you wished without a noticeable degradation of the teleprocessing task. The serial device buffer can range from 512 - 16,000 bytes (user controlled). -- ======================================================================== Joe O'Hara || Comments represent my own opinions, Commodore Electronics Ltd || not my employers. Any similarity to Software QA || to any other opinions, living or dead, || is purely coincidental. ========================================================================