dave@micropen.UUCP (03/24/87)
In response to my own article in comp.misc and to Ted Holden's
flame of multitasking.
Ted, Ted, Ted, there are a lot of people who need multitasking.
With memory management. With an operating system that regulates
system resources. Your own example of TSR and the subsequent
messages on their voodoo computer engineering and the lack of
robustness proves (to me at least) that even diehard MS-DOS
fans feel things could be *MUCH* better than the present.
Look at the number of communications programs and print queue
managers than simulate multitasking with the only hook in MSDOS
to support such things. KLUGE KLUGE KLUGE.
The easiest question in this whole mess is why didn't IBM use the
memory management facilities on the 80286 to bring a real product
to market? Answer: Series 1, system 3X and their cousins that have
already felt a pinch due to lowend PC sales. An AT outdoes those
machines that IBM has single vendor advantage--just where they want it.
But Ted is right about inherently single user computing. Why would
anyone want a multiuser desktop? Shared resources for one. I am
doing an entire development on two AT's with Microport UNIX(tm).
Developers have revision and source control, email and usenet, printers
and plotters all on the same machine. A tremendous cost advantage
over networks and such. (Let's talk about robustness and reliability
of PC networking products before we slay the multiuser systems.)
To Ted's comment of filesystems:
The filesystem is plenty robust for me. (My superblocks have built
in redundancy. When was the last time your FATs got barfy? In six
months I have seen only an occaisonal empty file deleted in fsck(1).)
My UNIX(tm) flushs modified superblocks every ~10 seconds and so if I have
a catastrophic failure I have a lot less chance of filesystem damage
than does your DOS. Plus the memory management of the 80286 ensures
that simple failures like errant programs don't crash the system.
MSDOS development cycle: edit-compile-run-reboot because a misdirected
pointer will trash the program or DOS itself.
Arguments against a multitasking desktop: Complexity of a "real" computer
that needs real administration is too much for joe-corporate-user or
jane-videogame-player. Filesystem cleanup, resource allocation, etc,
require a skilled operator that a "use then turn off" machines like most
homecomputers and PC's don't have. A computer that multitasks and does
"simple" things like usenet or other remote retrieval late at night
requires power 24 hours a day--not "use then turn off". It requires setup
and *maintainence* to make sure that logs are read and that cleanups
happen etc. Personally, I believe that maintainence will be the largest
cost of a computer system in the 1990's. Not hardware as in the sixties
or software as in the seventies but paying someone to come in and keep
your personal computer downloading, uploading, cleaned up, tuned up
and backed up.
--
David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
...!{seismo}!rochester!ur-valhalla!micropen!dave
"The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll