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From: rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Multitasking on the ST
Message-ID: <2794@quanta.eng.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 89 06:01:35 GMT
References: <8908021826.AA05333@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <15627@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <652@opal.tubopal.UUCP> <15706@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <666@opal.tubopal.UUCP> <15780@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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Reply-To: rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere)
Organization: Ohio State Univ, College of Engineering
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In article <666@opal.tubopal.UUCP> alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera) 
writes:
>  And, If I'd decide to write a real nasty program to run under Minix, 
>the chance is 99% that I crash the WHOLE system with this program. Myself,
>I am a Minix user and I think I know what I'm talking about.

I'll gladly concur until you supply evidence to the contrary. :-)

>  Conclusion : Minix is a very nice software to use it for learning about
>time sharing, but it's useless for a *secure* (as I said above) every day
>multi(tasking|user) operation because it is definetely not reliable enough.
>You WILL have this problem with all multi tasking systems running on an
>unmodified ST.

Yup.  You will also have the _exact_same_ security problem with any task
switcher on an unmodified ST.  At the very least the taskswitcher must keep
part of itself in memory.  I can trash that from my program.  You will have
the same problem with a RAM-disk.

This is not an argument against multitasking and for task switching because it
applies with equal force to both.

SR