Cool AppleSoft BASIC trick I never thought of before

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_albert.ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu May 18 11:28:24 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.

I don't think this is particularly a problem on the Apple ][ series. IIRC,
all I/O is CPU intensive, so giving up the CPU during I/O will likely cause
the I/O to fail. Am I getting old? The details of the Disk ][ interface
are only faintly registering on my brain. Wasn't the input a bit at a time
with a software wait between bits, or am I confusing that with the tape
interface with its half-hardware/half-software 1-bit ADC?

Of course, none of this is a concern with cooperative multitasking of BASIC
programs but if someone implements an interupt generator on a ][ for
multitasking purposes, it could become a concern.

Eric
Received on Thu May 18 2000 - 11:28:24 BST