braner@batcomputer.UUCP (06/07/87)
[] Looking forward to the 2-meg machines of next year: 1 meg is just right for me now, but I could use 2 megs as follows: Say 640K for the usual workspace, another 640K for a "shadow" machine, and the rest (768K) for a reset-proof RAMdisk in High RAM. The idea is: you press a "hot key", and the complete TOS environment (the first 640K) gets copied into the next 640K. Next time(s) you press that hot key, the two 640K pieces get _swapped_. That way you can run two separate applications in RAM, instantly switching back and forth. The two can communicate via the RAMdisk (which should also work as a disk-cache...). Question: would that be hard to "roll your own"? How does it compare with the way "K-switch" works (I don't have it)? When will the 1-meg chips get down to a decent price? Will application programs be written in an even more sloppy manner, to use up the full 2 megs? More ideas: since the ST is so affordable, the obvious way to achieve a form of multi-tasking is to buy two machines. (What most people want/need when they say "multi-tasking" is one forground task and one background task.) Does somebody out there know how to connect two ST's (via the MIDI port?) so as to allow quick and easy communications? Ideally, one ST would run a command-line shell and be controlled through the other ST's keyboard and screen. Even better, the "slave" ST could be set up with no disk drive or monitor, just a cheap CPU unit, and boot off a ROM cartridge that will set up a RAMdisk and activate a "slave shell" that talks to the MIDI port. Anybody out there looking for a project? - Moshe Braner
jack@mcvax.UUCP (06/10/87)
In article <1288@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> braner@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (braner) writes: >[] > >Looking forward to the 2-meg machines of next year: 1 meg is just right >for me now, but I could use 2 megs as follows: Say 640K for the usual >workspace, another 640K for a "shadow" machine, and the rest (768K) for >a reset-proof RAMdisk in High RAM. The idea is: you press a "hot key", >and the complete TOS environment (the first 640K) gets copied into the next >640K. Next time(s) you press that hot key, the two 640K pieces get >_swapped_. That way you can run two separate applications in RAM, instantly >switching back and forth. The two can communicate via the RAMdisk (which >should also work as a disk-cache...). This touches on a problem that I encountered (and haven't solved yet): How can you make sure that the current program is 'idle', i.e. not doing any disk I/O, or something similar? It seems that this is necessary for a swapping scheme to work. My problem is more-or-less similar: I have an interrupt driven MIDI driver, and packets come in, requesting disk blocks. So, I want to read the block, and send it to the machine on the other side. However, how can I make sure that the current 'real' program isn't doing any disk I/O? -- Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp) The shell is my oyster.