weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Andrew Weaver) (01/28/88)
[this is in response to David Beckmeyer's call for reasons for him]
[to release a 'free' multi-task replacement for TOS. ]
David and net.folk:
Why should you release RTX into the 'free' domain (whether
you make it 'PD' or 'freeware', but that is another stupid debate
that should be moved to /dev/null)?
Why indeed. Because I want it! And other countless thousands
of ST users that want to use their machine for something other than a
graphics box that has no hope for a future. Multitasking is good,
humans multitask and computers should (and more often than not DO.)
Best of all, for Beckemeyer DevTools, it means money, Money
MONEY! Just think, real, honest-to-goodness manuals for all the neat
routines (and, uh, just maybe a real set of documentation unlike that
sold by a certain nameless company, with the initials a-t-a-r-i.
This would give BDT, at first anyhow, a small monopoly on new
multitask software until developers could begin. And, if Atari Corp-
oration finally sees something useful to be had, Mr. Tramiel could
open up his oh-so-tight pursestrings and go into an agreement whereby
RTX gets burned into new ROMs and BDT makes a tidy sum (and perhaps
becomes an "official" developer of RTX/TOS. Or, better yet, Atari
finally says, "gee, why don't we just get rid of the ROMs and make the
OS RAM resident" and not sell any machine with less than 1Mb. What a
great idea! Now we only have to make disks and we can release updates
every few months instead of every few decades.")
But those are my ideas. Send flames to the address below, or
if you feel exhibitionist send them to the net. I still like my ST,
but the next computer that I buy will be able to run Unix, and run
it well. The ST is nice, but it is unsupported by the company that
makes it, many crash frequently (including mine, but that's an
upcoming posting...) and are now overpriced.
I know, I know "bitch, bitch, bitch" but, as they say, you
know where the 'k' and 'n' keys are. Use them liberally, use them at
will.
--
Andrew Weaver, OSU College of Business weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
soon: weaver@osu-pisa.UUCP
PRIZE THE DOUBT
low kinds live without.joe@lakesys.UUCP (Joe Pantuso) (01/28/88)
In article <122@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes: > >This is a followup to the discussion of offering a free run-time >multitasking kernel to all Atari ST users. > [much deleted] > >So let's hear those arguments for a free RTX. Don't take that as >an invitation for a flame about how multitasking is or is not needed. >What I'm asking for is clear cut reasons why giving RTX away is >a sound business decision for BDT. With the persuavive powers of >this net, it just might happen! > >| David Beckemeyer - Beckemeyer Development Tools | I'll tell you why and how. First of all, yes we need this, and we need it for free or you can't convince people to use it. Or make it very cheap, like $15, put the manual on disk and that's that. *Very* cheap production for you. Alot of copies would sell since it is a nominal cost. Then, how will you make money. The nominal fee is one. The Second way is to make a tool kit available for programmers and make this about $20-$30, include as many technical notes and helpful infom as possible. I think that you would make as much or more money this way as any, and you would be doing the ST community a service. This is the way software is supposed to be distributed (I feel) and you would develop a good rep too. Snail Mail: Real Mail: *-------------------* *---------------* |Joe Pantuso | joe@lakesys.UUCP |You too can be | |1631 n. 69 St. | {ihnp4,uwvax}!uwmcsd1!lakesys!joe |famous in five | |Wauwatosa WI 53213| |easy lessons | *-------------------* "Veteran of the Psychic Wars...." *---------------*
exodus@uop.edu (G.Onufer) (01/31/88)
Yes, if a Developer's Kit for RTX was available for a small fee (~$40), and was _well_ written and _informative_, it would make lots of money for Dave. Just learn from Atari's mistakes :-) Greg Onufer
engst@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst) (02/01/88)
In article <5425@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Andrew Weaver) writes: >Or, better yet, Atari >finally says, "gee, why don't we just get rid of the ROMs and make the >OS RAM resident" and not sell any machine with less than 1Mb. What a >great idea! Now we only have to make disks and we can release updates >every few months instead of every few decades.") >Andrew Weaver, OSU College of Business weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu I must disagree with Andrew's point about putting the OS back on disk so we can get updates every few months. As much as I like the idea of frequent updates, I absolutely detest having to waste mongo megabytes just getting the stupid machine to boot. I work with Macs a lot, I really get frustrated when I can't even copy files between two disks because I have ONLY two floppies and neither of the disks I'm using has a system on it. I really like the way the ST boots without the system files on disk; that way you only waste DA space on the disk. It also speeds boot time a lot. Admittedly, if you have a hard disk it won't make a major difference, but I doubt most people do. Perhaps Atari could do something really neat and use the cartridge port for something, instead of just letting it sit off the side of the computer, as it does now. I'm not sure of any details, but it seems the cartridge port is the way to go as far as a compromise between ROMS and disks goes. After all, you can get those Atari 2600 cartridges for a few bucks now - and I can't believe that the price of making a cartridge is that much more expensive than making and copying a disk. And what if it is? Maybe the cartridges would become more popular and might actually be useful in the future (aside from David Small's Magic Sac, of course). Adam -- Adam C. Engst engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu pv9y@cornella.bitnet "If it's not interactive fiction, it's not fun."
geoffw@hubcap.UUCP (Geoff Williams) (02/02/88)
This is my first post so please bear with me. I have to agree with the points
Adam Engst brought up. Since the cartridge port was included on the ST, I would
like to see more software produced in cartridge format. Personally I believe
there may also be a great market out there for someone who could come up with
a better operating system (Not that there are any flaws in GEM 8-)
Geoff Williamsjsp@sp7040.UUCP (John Peters) (02/02/88)
I would like to put in my vote for a public domain version of the
MT C-Shell. After having used the shell with the Mark Williams C
Compiler for about 6 or 7 months now, I feel it is currently the only
viable way to get any real work done on the ST. The system has a few
problems but they are minor irretants at best.
Most of the stuff that I have been working on (Both a port of YACC
and LEX for the ST among others like cpio and tar) work only with command
line arguments whick the MT Shell handles well. If I had to try to
develope these without the aid of the MT Shell It would definitely have
taken much longer.
I feel that the introduction of a public domain Multi tasking system
for the ST would encourage other users to develope more software for the
ST. Lets face it the run of the mill software available for the ST is
either games, mediocre, or non existent. The best thing I have seen is
the Mark Williams C and the MT Shell with the Micro C Tools. Any thing
else (with maybe the exception of the developers MODULA II and being a
UNIX buff I can't stand anything remotely resembling PASCAL) is nearly
imposible to get anything constructive done with.
So my vote goes to a definit yes for putting Beckmeyers MT Shell
out on public domain, and Brovo to Mr. Beckmeyer for sugesting it. We
need more people actively trying to make the ST a users and developers
machine. Maybe someday Atari will even get away from the game machine
stigma.
Johnnie Peters
Unisys SLC. Ut.rwa@auvax.UUCP (Ross Alexander) (02/02/88)
In article <3540@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>, engst@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst) writes: > I must disagree with Andrew's point about putting the OS back on disk so we > can get updates every few months. As much as I like the idea of frequent > updates, I absolutely detest having to waste mongo megabytes just getting the > stupid machine to boot. Well, lets try to get away from the hyperbole and into the more mundane realm of facts ( "Just the facts, ma'am." ) ROM'ed GEM/TOS is 192K. This is by no stretch of the imagination `megabytes.' I might also point out that the cartridge port supports only 128K. Perhaps extensions to the ROM code could go in here, but there's not room for much more. There's no particular reason why someone (why should it be Atari? they don't do anything else, I don't expect them to do this either...) couldn't make a disk-bootable version of TOS/GEM/GDOS. The hooks are right there in the current ROM versions. It could be updated *frequently*; and it wouldn't compromise the use of the cart port, which I appreciate since my Magic Sac lives in there. It might take up 250K, which I view as cheap in view of the memory sizes which are becoming common with the introduction of the ST-{2,4}'s. /* fierce flames follow; the weak of heart may press N at this juncture */ Unfortunately, the whole thing has convinced me that Atari has, for all intents and purposes, abandoned GEM. Fine; I am seriously considering abandoning Atari. Especially in view of the "Moses Promised LAN" fiasco (was ever a product given such a stupid name?). I called Atari Canada last week, asking about availability. I was told 3rd or 4th quarter 88. Now, as I remember, this thing was announced 4th quarter 87. What was that all about, perhaps a way of conducting a straw poll? "If enough people call us, we'll consider building the thing; and we won't have to pay for market research." Or maybe they wanted to force someone out of the Atari-LAN market by making customers play wait-and-see? In either case, I am not impressed. In this context, I might also mention the vapourware ibm-pc gadget that was supposed to hook up to the DMA port and give msdos compatability for a reasonable price; that got lots of airplay and then sank without a trace - the PC-1 is *not* that product, I have seen it and it does not need an ST to operate. (As an aside, the PC-1 appears to "fill a much-needed gap"; it's too small and too unexpandable to be anything more than the VIC20 of the msdos world.) To clarify my attitudes a bit, let me explain that In The Beginning, I was really taken with the ST's, and recommended them to my friends and to people around the University generally. I knew there were shortcomings and bugs, but my basic faith in the good intentions of vendors led me to think that fixes, as the product became more popular and started to generate cashflow for Atari, would be forthcoming. I defended the things against various stacked benchmarks (the utterly stupid Byte reviews come to minla.( I showed anyone who would look the neat demo's, and promised nifty app's. Subsequent reality has been disappointing. So far, I have seen one (1) fix, and one (1) enhancement. The fix is FOLDERXXX; the enhancement is HINSTALL. And I (the University, really) am a registered developer. Ghods know what the rest of the world has gotten. I have also seen a lot of flashy but shoddy applications software. Who cares if a database has a wonderful GEM interface, if it crashes every time someone sneezes? Who cares if a spreadsheet is a perfect Lotus-clone, if it goes into hyperspace at random intervals? And in a similar vein, who cares if TOS is a decent msdos clone or not, if it's disk i/o is slower than molasses in January? My totally obsolete H89 (8-bit Heathkit with no disk controller and no dma) created and deleted files faster! Darn right it cached the FAT's, and with only 48K to play with, too. So I have been left with a certain amount of egg on my face, and a certain unpleasant taste in my mouth, vis-a-vis my earlier enthusiasm and recommendations. For what it's worth, I now am recommending Amstrads for the typical pc-buyer (you know, the word-bashing and spreadsheet type of user), and Amigas to the serious graphics freaks. I recommend ST's only to the hacker types who write most of their own stuff, and who aren't especially graphics oriented (so far, I am about the only person I know in this latter category), or to people who can't afford Mac's and want to do el-cheapo desktop publishing. Perhaps the release of Idris will be the turning point, although I have seen Atari snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once too often. What I am really waiting for is Minix. Yes, it has bugs; no, there's not much running on it. But we will have SOURCE, and be out from under the thumb of a certain Business-Is-War type who obviously thinks customers are cattle. Fine; let him do his business without me. Sincerely, Ross Alexander, Sr Systems Programmer, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta, T0G 2R0 alberta!auvax!rwa non-disclaimer: The above opinions _are_ the official position of Athabasca University Computing Services, Operations Department, Systems Programming Office (me).
long@sask.UUCP (Warren Long) (02/05/88)
In article <122@bdt.UUCP>, david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes: > > This is a followup to the discussion of offering a free run-time > multitasking kernel to all Atari ST users. > > So let's hear those arguments for a free RTX. Don't take that as I may have a few misunderstandings here, but here goes anyways. Anytime I say something stupid/incorrect, please correct me. My understanding is that the Beckmeyer multitasking Kernel will not run many (any??) of my favourite programs. Eg. Uniterm MicroEmacs Gulam MWC There are also many utilities that came with MWC that I assume I can recompile to run with RTX so they shouldn't be any problem. However, the above systems/programs are the ones that I need to run simultaneously. If I am wrong about the above programs, tell me and I will be off the to store right now!! What are the problems with these programs?? (or ST programs in general) GEM Calls?? Screen requirments?? I only have 1 screen/terminal to use, and each standard ST program also needs its own screen. On the Amiga this is solved by having all programs designed to run in windows. The user decides what size and where the window should be put. This is not possible with the ST: All the programs have been written with hard-wired assumptions about screen size and location. Obviously, we cannot take the same route as the Amiga. I see several possibilities: Have multiple screens, some way of switching between them, and some way of displaying the fact that a background window has changed in the corner of the foreground window. (eg. DiskBar or CornerClock type info) Divide the screen into 4 equal parts, each one devoted to a process/program. Again, each program has its own screen ram, and any sub-screen can be expanded to full screen width. (I would be happy with 4 progs...) I would like feedback/comments. Warren Long (long@sask) -- =-=-=-=-=-Warren Long at University of Saskatchewan, Canada-=-=-=-=- Home: 78 Carleton Dr.,Saskatoon, Sasakatchewan, S7H 3N6 Phone: (306)-955-1237 =-=-=-=-=-U-Email: ...!ihnp4!alberta!sask!long -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
egisin@watmath.waterloo.edu (Eric Gisin) (02/06/88)
In article <274@sp7040.UUCP>, jsp@sp7040.UUCP (John Peters) writes: > So my vote goes to a definit yes for putting Beckmeyers MT Shell > out on public domain, and Brovo to Mr. Beckmeyer for sugesting it. We I don't recall D. Beckmeyer ever offering to put his shell in the public domain, only the multitasking kernel (RTX). However, if he does make RTX public domain or cheap (15-30$ for binaries, no doc.) I suspect several people will add job control to PD shells, and DlibS will probably get fork().
wes@obie.UUCP (Barnacle Wes) (02/06/88)
Let me add my vote for RTX, if you'll publish the manuals for it. I
would be very interested in calling RTX inside some of my programs;
some of them cannot be completed without it. My brother has and uses
the MT-C shell, but the system did not include calling conventions for
RTX. I would be willing to PAY for the programmer's info (hopefully
NOT pay dearly, though) if I could freely distribute RTX with the
software.
--
/\ - " Against Stupidity, - {backbones}!
/\/\ . /\ - The Gods Themselves - utah-cs!utah-gr!
/ \/ \/\/ \ - Contend in Vain." - uplherc!sp7040!
/ U i n T e c h \ - Isaac Asimov - obie!wesleo@sunybcs.uucp (Leo Wilson) (02/09/88)
In article <1013@sask.UUCP> long@sask.UUCP (Warren Long) writes: >My understanding is that the Beckmeyer multitasking Kernel will not >run many (any??) of my favourite programs. Eg. > Uniterm > MicroEmacs > Gulam > MWC >There are also many utilities that came with MWC that I assume I can >recompile to run with RTX so they shouldn't be any problem. [...] If >I am wrong about the above programs, tell me and I will be off the to >store right now!! I have no problems with running UniTerm under MT C-shell (it does halt other running progs), MicroEmacs will allow other programs to continue running in the background unless what you're editing is really big. Gulam works as a shell under micro-rtx in place of csh (so does msh), and I run compilations using MWC in the background all the time. Tell me, please: Where does your info come from? I have had no problem running MWC, I'd finally throw this machine away if I had. I haven't had to recompile ANY of the MWC utils to get them to run, either! One thing that doesn't seem to work: UniTerm can't open files when using Kermit for file transfers under MT C-shell. Works okay for xmodem or ymodem or ascii, but it doesn't like something that kermit is doing. Protections, maybe? Leo E. Wilson 364 West Delavan Avenue Buffalo, NY 14213 (716)883-7573 (leo@gort.cs.Buffalo.EDU) ...!sunybcs[!leow]!leo leo@sunybcs.bitnet
t19@nikhefh.hep.nl (Geert J v Oldenborgh) (02/09/88)
Last time we tried RTX and the shell that came with it it would not
run FORTRAN (neither Absoft nor Prospero), nor Schoonschip, nor TeX
(lack of memory left over on a 1040). REAL programmers cannot live
without these. Does anyone know whether this situation has improved?
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh