Cool AppleSoft BASIC trick I never thought of before

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Thu May 18 08:10:47 2000

You may find that your multitasking effort works better if you don't accept
a time-slice when it's offered unless you're ready for it. Many times
(particularly with the rather slow disk I/O, etc) you are I/O bound or
waiting for another process to complete, it's better all around if you give
back the time-slice if you can't use it. If the time slice is small (e.g.
1/60 sec or so) it won't matter so much, but if it's long, i.e. 1/10 sec, or
so, you may want to avoid wasting it.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: <technoid_at_cheta.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: Cool AppleSoft BASIC trick I never thought of before


> I have a prototype multitasking operating system in 6502 machine language
> for the Atari 8-bit series machines. Might be useful if I get the gist of
> what this topic is about. The main purpose was to run several BASIC
> programs simultaniously and give each a timeslice. The timeslice for each
> task is adjustable.
>
> If true timeshareing is not required then I'd look to Tom Hunt for his
> AMAZING program "SNAPSHOT". Snapshot swaps images of ram to disk and
> produces the effect of multitasking but the tasks on disk are of course
> halted.... It is incredibly compatible. Tom Hunt is a God on 6502. He
> mainly wrote in ACTION! - a C-like language unique to the Atari from OSS
> (Optimized System Software - they used to be Sheperdson Microsystems and
> wrote Atari Basic in addition to many other things in the 8-bit world).
> Action had the benefit of a runtime package for distribution and very fast
> program execution when compared to most other languages for the Atari.
> Action! programs ran at near machine code speed.
>
>
> --
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> Jeffrey S. Worley
> Complete Computer Services
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> Technoid_at_Cheta.net
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>
Received on Thu May 18 2000 - 08:10:47 BST