c264-aq@jupiter.Berkeley.EDU (Class Account) (03/09/90)
It's interesting to read all these articles about implementing Unix in the Apple II, and many of them are fine points. However we ought to realize the amount of work and the ultimate benefit of doing such a task. A more feasible project which addresses the need of many Apple II users is background downloading or background printing. Forget about multi-users; it's senseless to buy another dump terminal to hook up to the Apple and to share its resource. The Apple is a personal computer and is meant to be used by me alone. Forget about multi-tasking. Most of us work on a single job at a time. The most obvious benefit of multi-tasking is for the programmers. Isn't it nice to compile a program and edit the source code at the same time? But then again, what's the percentage of programmers among the Apple users out there? Most of the tasks we do with the Apple II don't hold up the computer for too long. I mean it doesn't take that long to do speadsheet recalculation. What're really holding up the Apple are jobs like printing a long document (couple minutes, much longer with GS Works) or downloading/uploading a big file, typically 20-40 minutes with 2400 baud. It would be a tremendous help if these jobs are done in background. I've seen couple print spoolers for the GS so far but yet to see a program does background up/downloading. Would it be too hard to write an interrupt-driven up/downloading routine? The NDA for the GS seems to be a good place to start. I'll be waiting for your comments. -Willam