FCTY7284@RYERSON.BITNET (Peter Hiscocks) (07/06/89)
It seems to me, not having actually to do it, that it would be relatively
straightforward to add multitasking to the interpreted Basics for the Atari.
The Basic interpreter would protect and manage memory, and hopefully manage
the timing of events so that operation is not corrupted. Task switching would
only be permitted outside code sections that were not reentrant, and the state
of the 'virtual machine' could be saved and restored properly.
Having just used multitasking to solve a complex scheduling problem (a
multitasking kernel written in Commodore Basic on a C-64, believe it or not)
I am convinced this approach saved oodles of work. Next time, however, I do
want to do this with proper multitasking support.
Comments on the possibility, or email addresses to lobby for this feature in,
say, GFA Basic, would be helpful.
Peter Hiscocks
(416)465-3007