montnaro@spyder.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) (06/13/91)
In article <1991Jun12.215523.7379@cs.umn.edu> brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes:
Sort ("riffle-riffle" - paper shuffling, only for as long as
sorting takes. Obviously, there are a LOT of possibilities
for cpu-bound tasks, since the user is probably bored to death
waiting anyway...)
That reminds me of the old Three Rivers Perqs. When they were busy, the
cursor would change into a bee and fly around the screen. Of course, in a
multiprocessing environment grabbing the cursor would get annoying if you
had other things to do.
If I remember correctly, Perqs also had progress meters that indicated the
relative amount of work completed. (Didn't one or more of the Xerox
workstations also?)
--
Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com)sanjay@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Sanjay Keshava) (06/14/91)
In article <MONTNARO.91Jun13103549@spyder.crd.ge.com> montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com (Skip Montanaro) writes: > In article <1991Jun12.215523.7379@cs.umn.edu> brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith) writes: > > If I remember correctly, Perqs also had progress meters that indicated the > relative amount of work completed. (Didn't one or more of the Xerox > workstations also?) > > -- > Skip (montanaro@crdgw1.ge.com) I've used several of the Xerox workstations but don't remember seeing any one displaying the relative amount of work completed. Mainly, because, the OS usually doesn't know how much work needs to be done. Only the application does. Here's what I remember seeing: Alto - coffe cup appears when mail is being retrieved - hourglass with shifting sand appears when cpu is busy - toggling checkered flag during ftp Now, the Alto I used didn't do multi-tasking. The Dandelion (8010) and Daybreak (6085) running either the Xerox Development Environment or STAR or ViewPoint had other indicators which were similar, but these were multi-tasking machines, so the cpu couldn't be monopolized (usually). One hack I liked was the cpu/disk usage indicator. It displayed a bar graph similar to audio peak level meters, showing how busy the cpu was with applications. -- Sanjay Keshava Student in the UT Austin Graduate School of Business ->|<- Class of July 1991, Information Systems & Finance Greetings to fellow Anteaters ('84), Trojans ('87), and Longhorns ('91). sanjay@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | ...!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!sanjay