Re: Supervisor mode & multitasking

[Konrad Kokoszkiewicz <draco@piwo.bl.pg.gda.pl>]

> And besides: what exactly do we get
> out of that change? Could you please give an example? Eric had his
> reasons not to touch that behaviour...

I think I did an example? I.e. such a program like networked BadMood. OK,
this is a game ("no need for such a software"). So generally: supervisor 
multitasking would make the system run more smoothly. Now any disk access
blocks everything. This is generally sad, when you gonna try to work in a
text editor having a program which is searching for something on a
filesystem in the background. Also s3mod is practically unusable for this
reason. Flow text output to the console also practically blocks (like
disposed cat /dev/ttyb while a computer at the other side of the cable
keeps sending junk via RS-232) and is impossible to abort using Control/C.
FInally, if a program enters suprvisor mode and crashes, there's no way to
get control back on the system. More examples?

> I really would like to know what your personal problem is.

Being sad person you never gonna understand it.

> Somebody asked me about information about XFS programming, and I pointed
> him
> exactly to the place where *I* got my information from -- meaning all
> the
> example XFS code in MiNT. And small XFS modules like procfs.c are very
> readable.

There's no need to discover everything twice or more times. If one knows
something, there should be no problem to him to give out this knowledge as
a comprehensive doc or (as it was requested) as a skeleton XFS. I've
personally never had a problem with giving people the full possible
information, according to my 8-bit or ST computing knowledge, if they
asked something. I've also never had a problem telling them "I don't
know", if I wasn't able to answer the question. So I can't understand your
tendention to give laconic, meaningless responses to any question you're
being asked. But this is really your problem. 

> I have the feeling that everbody who questions whether a majot change to
> MiNT makes really sense becomes automatically your enemy. Correct?

No, not correct.

> Now I agree that there are lots of places where MiNT changes *would* be
> a good idea. Like getting rid of all these chaos in the biosfs and to
> instead
> rely totally on HSMODEM. Or to rewrite TOSFS to get rid of the slow
> old GEMDOS bases interface.
 
Afaik, TOSFS is being rewritten right now, though I've never seen the new
source. Though no need for me to see everything (I believe the author
knows what he's doing). Any other proposed changes, regardless of whether
they have been done later or not, came from real experience. Perhaps
changes give us not much, but conserving the existing state (with all the
bugs and imperfections) give us nothing.

And I agree, of course, with your opinion about biosfs.

Gtx,

Konrad M.Kokoszkiewicz
mail:draco@bl.pg.gda.pl
http://www.orient.uw.edu.pl/~conradus/

** Quem Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius.
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