🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <nevin-1808951939520001@mac-nevin.cs.arizona.edu>,
Nevin ":-]" Liber <nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
>In article <413d0p$eqe@sundog.tiac.net>, Jim Williams <williams@tiac.net> wrote:
>
>> Actually, with "coorerative multitasking" per se the app can only hang the
>> system.
>
>Can't even do that.  Macs have interrupts.

    Well, I suppose you'd be right to point out that mactcp isn't
an app, but until I did some system administration work recently,
I had both a Mac and a Unix machine on the same ethernet segment --
a segment that also included the departments Quickmail server. During
the day, a lot of mail would flow into and out of said quickmail
server (my employers, bless their black hearts, adore email) with
amusing results;  the Unix machine, which runs Appletalk so the local
macs can share files with it, would become quite slow if you were talking
out the network, which was quite annoying, until you compared it to the
Mac, which would pop up the little "I am talking to the network, so
bugger off!" icon in the menubar and lock itself tighter than a drum
until (a) the Quickmail server dispatched all the mail it was being
sent or (b) I got fed up and powercycled the machine.

    Since I am a lowly database developer, I don't know whether
this was our friend multifinder busily checking all those packets
to see if any one was the secret "This man uses Unix, you must
kill him now" protocol, or if MacTCP was simply being beaten to
within an inch of it's life by all these mail packets which were
flying by, but when the Unix machine (which started out as a mighty
486DLC -- about the moral equivalent of a 020) keeps working while
the Mac (A mighty IIci, which is, I believe, a 020) does, slight
flickering of the <-> aside, an excellent imitation of a cooling
corpse, it's a _really_ good argument in favor of having a
properly implemented preemptive multitasking system.  (Comparing
to Unix may not bother you, but you can bet your ass when microsoft
phases out Win95 for the *New* *and* *Improved* NT with a Win95
shell, they will gleefully produce demos showing powermacs locking
up while the NT boxes carefully mop the floor with them.)


                  ____
    david parsons \bi/ Pray for Copeland, since a million usability
                   \/                    surveys won't save the Mac.