bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig) (03/14/90)
In article <1990Mar13.222838.25058@umigw.miami.edu> jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) writes: >In article <1990Mar12.235329.13710@intercon.com> amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes: >:In article <892@gistdev.gist.com>, andy@gistdev.gist.com (Andy Warinner) >:writes: >:> Rumor has it that the Caffeine Manager is the cause of the delays of >:> System 7.0 but don't quote me on that. >: >:Well, according to inside sources, all of the source for the Caffeine Manager >:was lost in the earthquake. Since all software development in Cupertino >:depends on Caffeine Resources (types 'COLA' and 'KONA', most notably), this >:slowed down work on both System 7.0 and HyperCard 2.0... > >What about 'JOLT' resources? Actually, the Caffeine Manager was being developed outside of the System Software building by a small, professional group of secretaries chosen from the larger Apple secretarial core for their skill at taking coffeebreaks. They still working on the Caffeine Manager presently. In fact, I think I read in MacLeak that they have almost all of the bugs worked out of it, except for a strange incompatibility with Microsoft software. Unlike the rest of System Software, which is simply going through an extensive rewriting, the Caffeine Manager is being developed quite literally from the grounds up. It is being tested with a new application titled `Espresso' that will make full use of IAC in order to gain complete control over a peripheral Mr. Coffee device. Future plans for the Mr. Coffee include 32-Bit Color QuickDraw compatibility, stereo sound, and interactive cut-and-paste. The use of Espresso along with the Mr. Coffee device on a network has proven largely successful, the only significant difficulty so far being a strange incompatibility with Microsoft software. The `JOLT' resource is deigned with a different purpose in mind. (While Apple's resources are normally named with four lower-case letters, those pertaining to the Caffeine Manager are named in caps.) In anticipation of the heavier demand being placed on the Motorola 68040 CPU in forthcoming models of Macintoshes, engineers at Apple realized that an external power source might be needed to provide occasional spikes to the floating-point coprocessor. Thus, whenever the Macintosh begins to undertake a series of heavy calculations, it passes a message to the JOLT code, which will selectively scan the network for servers of cola with high sugar levels. When such a server is located, it will download a suitable quantity of the cola from the host over AppleShare and apply it to the coprocessor. However, the Macintosh Thought Police are currently debating the proper use of JOLT, as it tends to suffer from spurious crashes on machines that use NutraSweet, and it often demonstrates a strange incompatibility with Microsoft software. I hope that this clears up matters somewhat. << Brian >> -- | Brian S. Kendig \ Macintosh | Engineering, | bskendig | | Computer Engineering |\ Thought | USS Enterprise | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU | Princeton University |_\ Police | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET | ... s l o w l y, s l o w l y, w i t h t h e v e l o c i t y o f l o v e.