========================================================================= (C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== ************ Topic 34 Sat Mar 14, 1992 E.KRIMEN [Ed Krimen] at 21:11 EST Sub: MultiTOS A topic for the discussion of Atari's MultiTOS, a multitasking TOS based upon Eric Smith's MiNT. 204 message(s) total. ************ ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 1 Wed Apr 07, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 03:40 EDT Eric, This idea of multitasking on my ST is a bit tantalizing. Of course, compatibilty with my existing software is a big issue as others have mentioned. I was very interested in your response to the question about .PRG's. Is there any difference in the way resident software will work under MultiTOS or does nearly anything have the potential to be resident software? ===Tomas=== April 07, 1993 @ 0:08:11 am PDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 2 Wed Apr 07, 1993 DENNYA [Denny Atkin] at 17:02 EDT Anyone remember the good old days when Uncle Jack used to say "you don't want or need multitasking--it just slows the computer down." :- ) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 3 Thu Apr 08, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 13:45 EDT Yes, I do... Seems to me that we were selling computers with just 8 Mhz 68000s at the time. And we still feel the same about it. Virtually every message you've seen from Atar regarding the use of MultiTOS cautions owners of ST's that while it will work, it will be slow, and prone to crash. The 68030 is much better suited to multitasking than the 68000. Nice to see you, Denny! best regards, Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 4 Thu Apr 08, 1993 DENNYA [Denny Atkin] at 23:48 EDT Bob, Well, I multitasked fine with a 7.14MHz 68000 for about five years before I got my 030. :-) I was just digging through my old magazines and found some of the old Creative Computing, Byte, and COMPUTE! issues when the ST was first shipping the Amiga had been announced but not shipped, and I caught that remark about multitasking. I just thought it was pretty amusing in retrospect. :) Cheers, ...Denny ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 5 Fri Apr 09, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 11:56 EDT Tomas: Programs that terminate and stay resident will often work correctly under MultiTOS (as long as they don't try to use undocumented features). You may have to do some adjusting of the AUTO folder; generally TSR's should run before MINT.PRG, but there will be a few that have to run after MINT.PRG. New MultiTOS aware programs generally shouldn't stay "resident", since there's no need to -- under MultiTOS you can have as many programs open at the same time as your computer will hold, so there's no need to resort to the old style of resident code. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 6 Fri Apr 09, 1993 WAYNED. [Wayne] at 21:53 EDT >New MultiTOS aware programs generally shouldn't stay "resident", >since there's no need to -- under MultiTOS you can have as many > programs open at the same time as your computer will hold, so >there's no need to resort to the old style of resident code. Does that include all the bazillion Auto folder fixes I use? Also things like Warp 9, CodeKeys, UIS, etc? Wayne ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 7 Sat Apr 10, 1993 S.SCHAPER [Meneldil] at 01:56 EDT Would that 68020 emulator make MTOS more bullet proof on older machines? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 8 Sat Apr 10, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 14:13 EDT No, it wouldn't. Wayne, You will have to run UIS after MiNT, not sure about the other ones, or the bazillion auto folder fixes that you're running I run SERFX2.PRG, Folder300, CACHE090, SAM, and AUXINIT before MiNT. Seems I've managed to cut down from a bazillion to just a few now a days! I do remember the days of running 27 programs in my auto folder, though. regards, Bob ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 9 Sat Apr 10, 1993 WAYNED. [Wayne] at 23:57 EDT Bob, Eric, Here's what I'm presently running in my Auto folder..... CALSHOW PRG CODEKEYS PRG CODE_RAM PRG DESKMG33 PRG HOTWIRE PRG POOLFIX4 PRG SERIALFX PRG SX PRG TOS14FX2 PRG UIS_III PRG WARP9_ST PRG Most is pretty self-explanatory except for SX.PRG which is a program that came with my Omnimon MultiSync which keeps the computer from rebooting if the res changes. That way I can run Revolver if I like with a mono and color setup and switch between the two. It's not something I do very often. The main reason I keep it (SX.PRG) on all the time is that static can cause the Omnimon to switch from color to mono and vice-versa. Not a problem in the summer, but in the winter with the dry air it is. I've got the last version of MiNT that was posted, but haven't installed it yet. I'm BETA testing Flash II and the next update is going to be for compatibility with MTOS. How close would my testing with MiNT be to running MTOS? Wayne ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 10 Mon Apr 12, 1993 S.SCHAPER [Meneldil] at 01:23 EDT Ah, Bob, but wouldn't it be fun? Run the 68020 emulator to run MultiTOS, and run PC-Ditto as a process, and run GEMulator in PC-Ditto. Why, you might get speed similar to an old Altair! ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 11 Mon Apr 12, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 13:45 EDT Wayne: I haven't tried all the programs in your AUTO folder, so I don't know which will and will not work with MultiTOS. Obviously there's going to be a period of "shaking out" where we find out which things will need upgrades for MultiTOS compatibility. If a program works with just plain MINT.PRG, then that's an indication that it *might* work with MultiTOS; but MultiTOS does consist of more than just MiNT, so it's not a guarantee. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 12 Mon Apr 12, 1993 WAYNED. [Wayne] at 20:34 EDT Meneldil, Why not at a Spectre GCR, running SoftPC in that chain. :-) Let's see..... Run the 68020 emulator, run PC-Ditto as a process, Run GEMulator in PC-Ditto, Run Spectre GCR from the GEMulator, Run SoftPC on the Spectre, then run another GEMulator to run your Atari programs. Let's see that would give you 3 Atari's, 2 PC's, and 1 Mac all to run a program on your Atari. :-) --------------- Eric, I did install MiNT and tried it out for a bit. I didn't notice any major slowdown, but it seems quite a bit of my PD stuff didn't work all that well. Admittedly I didn't fool around a lot with settings and such, and I have very few TOS programs to run in the background. I was hoping to use it to help BETA Test the MTOS changes to Flash II, but have been told that enough has changed since .95 (the last uploaded MiNT that I know of) and the true MTOS Beta that it may not be worth the effort. True? BTW, just from the little I saw of .95 it's come a long way and is much nicer that the earlier version I played around with over a year ago. Nice job. Wayne ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 13 Wed Apr 21, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 05:12 EDT Was just wondering... I came across one of the GIFs I received with AEO (I believe) and I have one called MTOS_TT. I think that it is a screen shot of MTOS on a TT. If this is the case, it is then MTOS that gives you the color icons and 3D window gadgets and not TOS 4.x that I had thought. So if I run MTOS on my TT, it will give me full color icons (depending on the resolution I am in) and so on even on a TOS 3.06? I just wanted to clear that up.... --Lou T.-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 14 Wed Apr 21, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 21:59 EDT I hope the TOS Gods will forgive me for answering questions.. but.. Lou, the answer is yes. The AES that comes with MultiTOS supports the 3D buttons, color icons, etc just as TOS 4.01 supports them. (At least it did when I left Atari and I am pretty sure this hasn't changed) So, if you run MultiTOS on your TT, you will get color icons and all the rest of the user interface improvements that you see in TOS 4.01. This is yet another reason to upgrade to MultiTOS once it is available. -- John PS. Atari people: If you find that I am wrong or want me to be quiet, just speak up and tell me to shut up! I just thought I would share a few of the things I remember. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 15 Thu Apr 22, 1993 AEO.MAG [?] Travis [?] at 01:12 EDT Lou, The version of MTOS that I am running on my TT030 does include a GEM.SYS file. (Designed for pre TOS 4.xx machines.) When someone runs MTOS on a non- Falcon030, it loads in the new GEM.SYS, giving TOS 4.xx functionality. (Near total functionality, as far as I can tell.) The General Setup CPX (along with other applications) reports TOS 3.06, but you'll have the new windows, icons, etc. The whole nine yards. John, Please _don't_ shut up! While Atari Corp. has lost your talents, :-( the users can still make use of your insight and experience. :-) --Travis Guy Atari Explorer Online ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 17 Thu Apr 22, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 09:07 EDT John, Keep those answers coming! You're a living resource, or something. (Doesn't that make you sound like some 125-year-old guru?) Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 20 Thu Apr 22, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 16:58 EDT John: I think you still qualify as a "TOS god" (or at least demigod). :-) Thanks for answering, and of course your answer is right. Just to clarify things a bit: *both* MultiTOS and Falcon TOS have 3D buttons, color icons, etc. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 21 Thu Apr 22, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 17:58 EDT TOS Demigod or is that SemiGod? I forget! Hi John, Al, et al. Nice to hear from you.. and for those that asked, the new job is great! Lots of very interesting stuff and a new system to learn. Nothing like a challenge! But.. we had better return this to the regularly scheduled topic before Darlah shows up and starts writing tickets! -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 22 Thu Apr 22, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 20:25 EDT John, It's great that you are still participating and I would like to see you continue. Even though you no longer work for Atari, you still have a lot to offer and I appreciate anything you can tell us. Thanks. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 23 Thu Apr 22, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 22:31 EDT JOHN, Thanks for the information! I find it really inviting to see MTOS on my TT as well as the Falcon then. And I hope that the Atari folks wont ask you to quiet down . I am glad that you still visit the ST RT and share whatever you can with us. ERIC SMITH, I do not know if you can answer this or not, but I plan on getting a Falcon. MTOS will bundled with it. What I wanted know is if it will also include the GEM.SYS for non-Falcon machines as well, so that I may also use it on my TT030 (TOS 3.06)? --Lou T.-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 24 Thu Apr 22, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 22:50 EDT Well, I can say that multiTOS gives ME 3D icons on a 2.06 MegaSTE, and I've been told that I can say whatever I want about it. :) ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 25 Thu Apr 22, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 22:56 EDT or rather, make that 3D gadgets and COLOR icons... ;) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 26 Sat Apr 24, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 02:28 EDT TOWNS - Besides that, I'm sure the people at Taligent wouldn't be too keen on you spouting off details! Maybe once Taligent 1.0 is finished, you could compile and test an Atari version just as a 'small' side project??? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 27 Sat Apr 24, 1993 R.ALBRIGHT7 [Robb] at 15:42 EDT Eric and John, Just to clear up further, does MultiTOS give colour and 3-D icons on a 68000 (i.e. Mega STe) or is it just on a TT?? Thanx, and I cant wait to see MTOS on my MSTe whether or not the cool gadgets are there. Robb Albright Pres, Portland (OR) Atari Club ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 28 Sat Apr 24, 1993 JKUEHN [John] at 21:23 EDT Bill Rehbock - During the RTC about three weeks ago the following conversation ensued: The following is from the conference on 07 April 93 <[John] JKUEHN> The .XFS driver that I have only supports Kodak CD_roms <[John] JKUEHN> I need one that will read other High Sierra AND ISO 9660 CDs :-) John, there is a newer version that we'll get posted in the next week or so. We'll be doing a 100% q/a inspection on the first few hundred F030's that come in and it will be keeping us I was Just wondering if the proposed U/L of the MultiTOS CD-ROM .XFS driver has fallen thru the cracks. Also, is there any news available reguarding the impending non-Falcon versions of MiNT/MultiTOS? Keep those Falcons flying. John Kuehn ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 29 Sun Apr 25, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 02:44 EDT COlor icons require a 16 color or more display, so you'll only get them in Low Rez on a mega (without graphics card) but the 3D gadgets look nice even in monochrome. ~Chris (with MTOS running on his MegaSTE) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 30 Mon Apr 26, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 13:03 EDT Lou: All versions of MultiTOS use the same GEM.SYS file -- even on Falcons it is loaded from disk. The Falcon ROM doesn't yet have any special MultiTOS support (*). (*) Actually, there is a small amount of technical support, but it's not something the average user will notice... in practical terms MultiTOS works the same way on all Atari machines. Robb: Yes, MultiTOS gives colour icons and 3D gadgets on all machines (although as someone pointed out, colour icons only show up in resolutions that have at least 16 colours). ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 31 Tue Apr 27, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 03:20 EDT Eric Smith, Thanks for the info... Will MultiTOS have its own icon resourse file? Another words the icons I currently using in my TT with TOS 3.06 will not be avaiable with MTOS because it has its own, right? --Lou T.-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 32 Tue Apr 27, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 20:01 EDT Lou T.: MultiTOS will use your TT's existing icon resource file in resolutions with less than 16 colors. In resolutions with 16 or more colors, it will try to use its color icons, which are contained in a speparate resource file. If the color icon resource file is not found, the ordinary ("black and white") icons are used. Eric ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 33 Tue Apr 27, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Jim] at 22:50 EDT Eric (or someone else at Atari), I know it's not your area but can you tell us if MultiTOS will come with a SOLID manual. Atari manuals have always been weak. I'm not an AmigaDOS fan but the manual for 2.0 was very nice. It contained things that everyone needed to know, as well as this some people shouldn't know. Thanks. Jim. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 34 Wed Apr 28, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 05:09 EDT Eric, Thanks for the info... I bet that there will be an icon editor someday for those color icons. Perhaps SDS will come out with one. (I am assuming that MTOS does not have an editor for its icons). Jim, The best thing about AmigaDOS may just be the manual ;-) I am just happy that on the Atari platform, we are not forced to use CLI like AmigaDOS. --Lou T.-- ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 36 Thu Apr 29, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 00:38 EDT Before I left Atari, I had a chance to see the manual for MultiTOS. If you are looking for information on how to use MultiTOS as a user, then I think you would be satisified with this manual. However, if you are a power user and you want information on how MultiTOS does what it does, etc. then you will probably want additional information. But, remember.. Atari's manuals usually fall into the scope of "Let's answer the most common questions, address the common problems, etc." They don't try to address the Power User who can figure things out for themselves or are usually pretty well connected to user groups or online services for information. As for icon editors, I know that people in Germany have been working on them. I imagine that Scott Sanders of SDS will eventually support the new icon format as well. Interface (the German resource editor) will also be supporting it (I think). Thanks again for the continuing welcome. Its nice to be wanted ;-) -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 37 Thu Apr 29, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 18:29 EDT Thanks, John. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 38 Sat May 01, 1993 S.SCHAPER [Meneldil] at 00:56 EDT TiNT is Not Taligent Chris, MTOS isn't out yet, is it? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 39 Sat May 01, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 22:36 EDT It's not out as far as I know... ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 40 Sun May 02, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 13:34 EDT I noticed in Dorothy's article about Piracy in the Atari marketplace that MultiTOS 8.0 is already available on pirate boards. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 41 Mon May 03, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 00:13 EDT Heck, software is usually availible on pirate systems before it goes on sale... Pretty scary. :) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 42 Tue May 04, 1993 S.SCHAPER [Meneldil] at 20:10 EDT Let us hope that it is beta testers who are talking about it online, then. . . ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 43 Wed May 05, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 00:02 EDT At least I get to play around with it on my friend's Falcon. :) Unfortuantly, it eats up alot of memory, so he rarely uses it. (He's got the 4MEG Falcon...) When will an upgrade to 14MEG be availible? (If the 14meg Falcon was availible he would have bought that instead.) -- My friend is getting a CPX mailed to him that, supposeably, will disable the blitter and/or cache on the Falcon. When he gets it, if it actully works, I'll upload it here. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 44 Wed May 05, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 02:55 EDT J.ROY18 - It's kinda like SCTV's Alpha Channel - a channel which showed new movies before they were released (WHILE they were being filmed, actually!). ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 45 Wed May 05, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 16:21 EDT Jonathan.. turning off the Cache should be too big a deal. But, turning off the BLiTTER on a Falcon030 is bad (unless you have a software screen accelerator loaded). See, there is no software BLiT code in the Falcon ROMs. If you turn off the BLiTTER in a Falcon030, you will crash the machine. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 46 Wed May 05, 1993 F.GORON [Frank] at 18:30 EDT Now that the Dealer model Falcons are out & the Consumer units are on the way, I'm getting kinda excited 'cause that means the MTOS upgrade will be available soon as well (I hope). Is there any word as to when it'll be available? Also I'm curious. I know that the upgrade will provide the multitasking features to existing machines, & there will be something of the new desktop as well. But will the new desktop be replacing the existing one, or will it be simply adding specific features to the existing one, i.e. the 3d appearance, multicolor icons,etc.? Frank G. One more thing - is a price established yet? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 47 Wed May 05, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 18:51 EDT Towns, It'll be neat to see what happens when we turn it off then. :) We were just hoping that turning the cache off might help a few programs run on the Falcon that won't already. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 48 Wed May 05, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 21:37 EDT Jonathan.. good luck! ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 49 Thu May 06, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 03:12 EDT J.Renner: John summed up the MultiTOS manual pretty nicely: it's designed to help beginning users get going, and I think it does an OK job of that. Frank: The MultiTOS desktop replaces the one on your existing machine. It looks and feels just like the normal Falcon desktop, except that after you've launched an application the desktop windows are still open and you can still switch back to the desktop. I don't know anything about price or availability, sorry. It should be out "soon". ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 50 Sat May 08, 1993 R.STEGELMANN [Rolf] at 14:19 EDT I just played with a Falcon and MultiTOS at my dealer the other day. I started a couple of demo GEM programs. One of them drawing various color patterns in a window. Then I proceeded to bring up True Paint ( I think that is what it was called) and loaded a digitized picture. Problem is True Paint proceded to change all of the pallete colors. In the process it made the screen look very ugly. It changed the colors of the desktop icons and other application windows. I tried this while using the 256 color mode and the true color mode-- same thing. It seems that with the MultiTOS on the Falcon there needs to be some rules on how applications are to use the pallete. For example maybe the first 16 pallete registers should be reserved for the desktop and 3d gadets (window borders etc.) and applications should stay away from reassigning them to different colors. It seems like there should be a TOS or AES call that an application could make that would effectively ask "I need to use 128 color registers please give me the range that I can use that will not interfere with the other applications." So the question is, are developers given any guidlines on the use of the pallete to minimize conflicts with applications that might be running at the same time? Are there any TOS calls that will help with that allocation of colors? Rolf ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 51 Sat May 08, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 21:04 EDT I think that if you change the current program (with the drop down bars on the top of the screen, if you know what I mean) to something else, it's palette will become the current one... Did I make any sense? :) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 52 Sun May 09, 1993 ATARIAUSTRIA [J.Widi] at 01:52 EDT John, version 2.20 of the German resource editor 'Interface' is already shipping and has support for color icons. I used it to merge my old black-and-white resource file and the new color icons into one big resource file and it worked out nicely. Once I can get my color monitor repaired I'm going to add more color icons and probably upload it for people who have no editors yet. -Johannes ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 53 Sun May 09, 1993 POTECHIN [Nathan] at 09:23 EDT Thanks for posting Johannes. Is 'Interface' available in English? Nathan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 54 Mon May 10, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 14:52 EDT My understanding from Bill Rehbock is that it is available in English, and I believe that Gribnif is going to be carrying it. - Bob Brodie ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 55 Wed May 12, 1993 J.BOSSOLINI1 at 08:12 EDT In regards to the picture viewer changing the desktop pallete: I have seen many picture viewers on the IBM/windows that do the exact same thing. this is obviously done to take advantage of all the available colors. Some even hafve an option to turn this feature off. Maybe that is the bet route... ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 56 Thu May 13, 1993 S.NOAH [Stu] at 02:07 EDT I went over to MidCities, with a couple of friends, this last weekend and ran a few programs on the Falcon. One of the programs was Truepaint. While running Truepaint, when I brought a different program/window to the top it's pallette became active and when I switched back to Truepaint the pallete changed back again. I can see how it would be nice to have the desktop retain its original colors but I've gotten use to this setup on my ST (and then my STf... STe). Stu ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 57 Thu May 27, 1993 C.FLUEGEL [Curt] at 01:15 EDT I have Mint 1.4 (or 1.04 whateveR) on my Falcon. Someone told me there is another version of Mint (1.6).. is this true? MultiTos is deathly slow on my Falcon, even with no applications running. Im curious if this is just a programming thing that can, or has been, fixed. Curt ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 58 Fri May 28, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 01:39 EDT Curt: MiNT 1.04 is the latest version of MiNT available. Newer versions will be made available from time to time, but in any case getting a newer version of MiNT won't help much with MultiTOS's speed problems on the Falcon. The slowest part of the system is GEM (specifically the GEM AES). We are working on improving that. In the meantime, use of a software GEM accelerator (such as NVDI or Warp 9) should improve the situation. I think that Falcon compatible versions of these should be forthcoming soon, if they aren't available already. Also, turning memory protection off via the MultiTOS CPX will also improve performance, although of course this has the cost of making the system more vulnerable to badly behaved programs. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 59 Fri May 28, 1993 AEO.7 [Gregg] at 21:49 EDT Eric; Thanks for the suggestion on turning the 'memory protection' off to gain speed. Just out of curiosity.... will turning it off in NON-MTSO (oops, NON- MTOS) mode do any good? It's not really needed in single tasking mode anyway. Also... have you got any idea as to what the 'DEVCONCT.PRG' is in the Falcon's AUTO folder? The rest of the Auto stuff was fairly obvious or logical, but that one is a puzzler. Gregg ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 60 Fri May 28, 1993 C.FLUEGEL [Curt] at 21:57 EDT Eric : I can't wait to upgrade my Warp 9 to the Falcon. I will try the memory protection idea. thanks.. Curt (s ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 61 Sun May 30, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 04:24 EDT Regular TOS doesn't use Memory Protection. Therefore, turning it off won't do any good. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 62 Sun May 30, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 10:16 EDT When will the ordinary ST user get to purchac se MultiTos and how much will it be? Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 63 Sun May 30, 1993 D.SHORR at 13:45 EDT I saw MultiTOS on my dealer's demo Falcon030 yesterday and was pretty impressed; we can finally run more than one program at a time! One of the first things a MultiTOS user should do is to save a desktop with a window open to U:\PROC\. This directory shows all your running processes, including MultiTOS, desk accessories, and applications. Just select Install Devices from the Options menu and open the PROC folder in drive U. If a program hangs, you may be able to reach the desktop and kill it by selecting it in the PROC window and dragging it to the trashcan(or by selecting Delete under the File menu). This is also the only way I know of dumping accessories. Most of this info came from the March Brodie RTC. I've already found a bug in MTOS: File Selector calls to a non-existent drive will bring up an alert box, but then leave the mouse pointer in the busy-bee state. It may stay in this form for awhile depending on the program; pretty annoying:). One question: is there a limit to the number of items that may appear under the Desk menu(assuming you have enough memory available)? Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 64 Sun May 30, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 16:47 EDT So far I have yet to find: 1. A midi sequencer that works under Multitos. (Except possibly MidiSpy which doesn't count because its not a full fledged sequencer and is an accessory anyway.) By the way, I had asked a while back whether Midi Music Maker worked under Multitos. It doesn't. 2. A telecommunications program that works under Multitos. (Again STalker might, but that wouldn't count because its an accessory anyway.) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 65 Sun May 30, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 17:48 EDT > 2. A telecommunications program that works under Multitos. (Again > STalker might, but that wouldn't count because its an accessory > anyway.) It can be run as a program. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Sunday 30 May 1993 at 06:40 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 66 Sun May 30, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 19:26 EDT As for a sequencer, check out the Barefoot stuff. They were showing their new version using Falcon Digital audio under MultiTOS at the SAC show. ~Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 67 Sun May 30, 1993 MUSE [Tomas] at 19:47 EDT David, MIDI Spy runs as a program also. Besides, it already multitasks. ===Tomas=== May 30, 1993 @ 4:38:45 pm PDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 68 Sun May 30, 1993 K.RICHARD2 [Bondservant] at 22:02 EDT Fairweather I believe that SmpteTrack Platium Works under mtos,I know it supposed to work on the Falcon(I don't have one but Barefoot does) ask for Dana at 818- 727-7143, or try Brad in the midi rtc cat 35 Bondservant ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 69 Mon May 31, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 00:07 EDT David, STalker can be run as an accessory or a program. --Lou T.-- Written: Sunday, May 30, 1993 11:27 p.m. EDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 70 Mon May 31, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 12:59 EDT Dave, From the MultiTOS demos I have seen, you can kill a DAS by shift-clicking of control-clicking (one or the other) on its name in the desk list. And you can have as many DAs as will fit in the list under the desk menu. run STalker as a prg, as Brian says. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 71 Mon May 31, 1993 F.BELL1 [Frank @ Home] at 13:06 EDT Brig, MultiTos is running for somewhere around $60.00 in Europe, SpeedOGdos too. Maybe in the States its cheaper. I hope so. Frank... ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 72 Mon May 31, 1993 BOB-BRODIE [Atari Corp.] at 15:30 EDT David, I think that most of us at Atari use STalker as an application, not as a DA. It works fine under MultiTOS that way...it's also what Eric uses! :) What other terminal programs did you try? Brig, I expect to have MultiTOS available to end users in North America in about a month. Remember if you're using an 8Mhz machine, it will be S-L-O-W. regards, Bob ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 73 Mon May 31, 1993 D.SHORR at 20:30 EDT Al, Thanks for the info; I must have missed that in the MultiTOS documentation. Is the list under the Desk menu scrollable? Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 74 Tue Jun 01, 1993 B.REHBOCK [BILL@ATARI] at 00:03 EDT MultiTOS will be shipping this week as a stand-alone package available to all Atari computer users. The dealer ordering number is MTOS-100. The retail price is $59.95 USD. Authorized Atari Dealers can place their orders through Atari. Dealers can also place their orders through Pacific Software. -Bill Rehbock, Atari Corp. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 75 Tue Jun 01, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 01:26 EDT Heck, on a Falcon it's slow. ;) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 76 Tue Jun 01, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:29 EDT Dave, On the MultiTOS setups I have seen, the list is not scrollable. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 77 Tue Jun 01, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 11:43 EDT Bill Rehbock - I have had problems getting the MultiTOS installer to run on TOS 1.2. Has this been fixed? If not, users of TOS 1.2 should be aware that they'll have to install each file themselves, into appropriate folders, and I believe they'll have to set up a configuration file. (Yes, I know about TOS 2.06...) -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 78 Tue Jun 01, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 12:43 EDT Oops! Sorry, Jim! I knew there was something I was supposed to do before I left Atari! Yes, I worked on the MultiTOS and SpeedoGDOS install programs and I found out just before I left that they didn't work on TOS 1.02 (Mega TOS) correctly. However, I never did nail down exactly what was wrong. Bob or Bill.. can you make sure that the Engineering Group knows about this problem? I have a feeling it is probably an easy fix and might be worth looking into before you have the stand-alone version duplicated for sale. (Assuming you haven't sent the disks to the duplicators already! ;-) As a side note.. You really should upgrade your machine. The faster GEMDOS alone is worth upgrading your machine. If you don't want to pay for TOS 2.06, you should at least dig up a set of TOS 1.04 chips! Those are probably going pretty cheap these days and they have a much better version of GEMDOS in them. -- John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 79 Tue Jun 01, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 13:23 EDT Gregg: Memory protection is always 'off' when you're not running MultiTOS; that button is only meaningful when MultiTOS is selected. DEVCONCT.PRG sets up some of the Falcon's sound registers (it does a "device connect" call). Some programs assume these registers are initialized, and won't produce sound unless DEVCONCT.PRG is in the AUTO folder. D.Shorr: There's no limit to the number of entries under the MultiTOS "Desk" menu. If you get more than will fit on the screen, scroll arrows appear to let you scroll through them. David: Stalker works fine under MultiTOS, both as a program and as an accessory. Aladdin also works, as does a dumb terminal program called "TIP". ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 80 Tue Jun 01, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 19:20 EDT Bob Thanks for the informaton in. I think that $59.99 is a fair price. Will or can we get it from Atari directly. There is no dealer close to Ft. Walton Beach , Fl. Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 81 Wed Jun 02, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 18:38 EDT Towns, Thanks for stepping in. Great to have support from the "other side," especially when you have your own new responsibilities these days. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 82 Wed Jun 02, 1993 C.ALLEN17 [Cliff] at 19:16 EDT The following is a personal opinion. I was somewhat impressed with MultiTOS on the Falcon, but because I own a TT, I tried it out on the store TT. MultiTOS appears to run in TT ram (using prgflag.prg). I did not notice the same slow down when running multiple processes on the TT as I did on the Falcon. Because I only have 4 megs of TT ram and 4 megs of ST ram, I will wait for 16 meg TT boards to become available (or at least the 4Meg nibble mode sims) and 8 meg ST ram boards before investing in MultiTOS. Question: will MultiTOS allow multiple processes to run if one process uses TT and the other uses ST ram? Cliff (Ashevillite) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 83 Wed Jun 02, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 19:49 EDT Cliff.. yes, You can run processes in whatever RAM you desire (as long as they can work in that type of RAM, of course!) And since the TT is a faster machine overall, its no big surprise that it will run MultiTOS faster than a Falcon030 will. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 84 Wed Jun 02, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 22:15 EDT This is a MultiTos check. Can I use my favorite word processor, while downloading on Genie? Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 85 Thu Jun 03, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:46 EDT Brig, If you use Aladdin, no -- Aladdin won't multitask, no matter what multitasker you are using. If you are using STalker, you don't need MultiTOS to download from GEnie while working in your favorite word processor, since STalker works happily in the background (multitasking) under standard versions of TOS. STalker should also do the same thing under MultiTOS, when run as a PRG. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 86 Thu Jun 03, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 20:56 EDT Al, I use Flash, but this STalker sounds interesting. Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 87 Thu Jun 03, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 21:14 EDT A quick question...Are the 3d icons similar to those used in windows? Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 88 Thu Jun 03, 1993 C.ALLEN17 [Cliff] at 21:26 EDT TOWNS, I hope this isn't redundent, but if you run multiTOS in TT ram, and two applications you are attempting to run, one will work in TT ram and the other will only run in ST ram: will there be a conflict in MultiTOS. I can't tie up the store TT running tests. I will still need more ram (TT and ST). I know, I know...we always want more and more is never enough. Cliff (Ashevillite) Computer STudio ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 89 Fri Jun 04, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 00:29 EDT Brig, There are GIF screen shots of the Falcon030 somewhere in the libraries here on GEnie. You look at the these pics to see the color icons of MultiTOS. If you can not find them, let me know. --Lou T.-- Written: Thursday, June 03, 1993 11:06 p.m. EDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 90 Fri Jun 04, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 09:26 EDT Where is the best place to get info on how to tweak Multitos? The manual doesn't even seem to mention the U drive and PROCESSES and PIPES and all that stuff. Also how come an old ST INFORMER talks about adjusting Program Flags but my version of Multitos doesn't seem to have the PRGFLAGS.PRG to do it? And why do I get all these error messages that say "Adjust Debug Level" with no instructions anywhere on how to do it? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 91 Fri Jun 04, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 13:04 EDT Cliff.. You should be able to run MultiTOS out of ST RAM or TT RAM with no problems. As for applications, those can run in whatever RAM they are capable of running in. 31 22 ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 92 Fri Jun 04, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 15:49 EDT FAIRWEATHER > >Where is the best place to get info on how to tweak Multitos? The manual >doesn't even seem to mention the U drive and PROCESSES and PIPES and all that >stuff. Also how come an old ST INFORMER talks about adjusting Program Flags >but my version of Multitos doesn't seem to have the PRGFLAGS.PRG to do it? >And why do I get all these error messages that say "Adjust Debug Level" with >no instructions anywhere on how to do it? >---------- > I discussed this with Bill Rehbock and he told me that Sunnyvale was working on a programmers manual with all the details included. The message 'Adjust Debug Level' comes from MiNT and since MiNT and all it's sources and technical information is freely available it should be quite easy to learn about that. PIPES, U-drive and PROCESSES is also documented in the MiNT documentation. Regards, Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 93 Fri Jun 04, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 22:55 EDT David, Sounds like you got a late beta version of MultiTOS. The release version shouldn't ever have such messages. Maybe Atari can arrange to send you the release version, or maybe there is an explanation here as to why Falcons equipped with MultiTOS would have an unfinished version of the OS. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 94 Fri Jun 04, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 23:53 EDT Cliff: MultiTOS will load as many applications into each kind of RAM (TT and ST) as will fit; for example, I frequently have 3 or 4 applications running in TT RAM at the same time as 2 applications in ST RAM. If an application will fit in TT RAM and can use TT RAM then it will go there first, otherwise it will load into ST RAM. Applications that can only run in ST RAM will only be loaded into ST RAM -- if there isn't enough ST RAM then the application won't run. David: We're working on developer documentation for MultiTOS. PRGFLAGS.PRG may be available on-line here on GEnie; we decided not to bundle it with MultiTOS because PRGFLAGS is fairly complicated and not very easy to use. The simpler CHPROT.APP included with MultiTOS will set a program's memory protection flags to "global access." If you ever get a message saying "Adjust Debug Level" then something has gone very seriously wrong with the computer, and you'll have to reboot. The message was left in by mistake, it doesn't actually do anything useful. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 95 Sat Jun 05, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 01:40 EDT What is "global access"? Is that something desirable that I should be using on all my programs that otherwise refuse to run under Multitos? -=-=-=-=-= I just tried it on Connect but got the same weird mouse bug where the mouse will only move in a horizontal line. Without Multitos the bug disappears. Weird. -=-=-=-=-= I just tried it on Interlink and it seems to help! More to come. . . ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 96 Sat Jun 05, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 01:52 EDT A.FASOLDT - Well, STalker isn't happy with SOME things. It'll work fine with most GEM programs, but TOS programs can bring it to a screeching halt! ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 97 Sat Jun 05, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 02:04 EDT Well I take it back about Interlink working better. It does manage to run without totally locking up the computer, but keyboard input is so erratic and non-responsive as to make it totally useless as a terminal program. I am becoming quite frustrated. Other than the programs supplied by Atari - Talking Clock - CalAppts. - Breakout = Lines - etc. I am having a less than 1% success rate in finding programs that are simultaneously Falcon and Multitos compatible. Eric Smith, can you point me towards some Multitos/Falcon friendly programs? Preferably of the shareware variety since my coffers were drained by my Falcon purchase. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 98 Sat Jun 05, 1993 J.BRENNER1 [See Flat] at 03:02 EDT David Fairweather, When you say Interlink doesn't work on Falcon, is that only in Multitos? Does it run correctly when you are in ST emmulation modes? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 99 Sat Jun 05, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 05:36 EDT From what I have read or heard, if you have a program that has erratic input from the keyboard, running it under MINIWIN (I think that is the name) will make your keyboard input normal again. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 100 Sat Jun 05, 1993 P-DIRECT [Sean@TWP] at 11:30 EDT Someone else is getting "Adjust Debug Level" too? Hmmm. It always tends to happen the second before you save something...but at the same time it happens unprovoked. Sean Dougherty Two Worlds Publishing ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 101 Sat Jun 05, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 12:15 EDT That's right See Flat. Interlink works 98% fine on the Falcon (the only problem being that it doesn't seem to recognize when a call has been hung up so that upon quitting you get a message about "Dont you want to hang up first?" But turn on Multitos and keyboard input on Interlink becomes slow and erratic, you have to hit the same key three or four times to get it to register on the screen. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I just tried Wayne's suggestion about running Interlink under Miniwin. I got a "Fatal MiNT error: adjust debug level and hit a key..." message. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 102 Sat Jun 05, 1993 D.SHORR at 19:52 EDT I used MultiTOS on my dealer's demo Falcon030 today and have found the following: it is possible to be unable to run any program even if there are megabytes of free memory left! How??? This can only happen if your Desk menu is filled up with too many desk accessories. I brought along my MultiDesk Deluxe MDX folder on a floppy and set the ACCPATH environmental variable(found in GEM.CNF) to point to my MDX folder. After rebooting, I couldn't even reach the desktop! My MDX folder contained 26 accessories, which is apparently more than the maximum number of accs that can be displayed under the Desk menu. The desktop is now just another program that can be shut down like any other(thanks to Al for the Ctrl-click tip); but since all of the items under the Desk menu were occupied by accessories, the desktop program had no place on the menu to show itself. I was left with a menu bar containing just the word MultiTOS. I pared down my MDX folder enough to get the Falcon to reach the desktop, but I couldn't run one single program(LINES, CLOCK, STeno). I would get a "Failed to launch" alert every time. At this point my Desk menu reached to the bottom of the screen with a number of desk accessories and one program, the desktop. The machine still had well over a meg of free memory left. The Desk menu IS scrollable, but only if the number of accessories present under the Desk menu is low enough to permit more than one program/application to be shown in the menu. I forgot to mention that the Show and Print functions are now also external programs and can be disabled for the very same reasons. Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 103 Sat Jun 05, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 22:39 EDT Eric, PRGFLAGS was released in '91 and is available on GEnie. Al Steve, I'm not sure what you mean about TOS programs and STalker. As a DA, STalker does not ordinarily drop down over a TOS application (although there are utilities that let any DA do that, and some TOS applications are actually GEMified enough to work OK with such DAs). Do you mean STalker does not behave when TOS applications are running under a TOSWIN window? Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 104 Sat Jun 05, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 22:50 EDT Dave, There are many weaknesses in MultiTOS, and you seem to have named a couple of them. This is a good example of the usefulness of MDD, since it can handle DAs better than MultiTOS can, and can keep many of them (as many os you have the patience to set up) as MDXes. MultiTOS is promising, that's clear. Let's hope Atari keeps working on it. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 105 Sun Jun 06, 1993 M.WEILERT2 [matt] at 00:23 EDT Al, RE: msg 103 Could you find me some file numbers on prgs that allow DA's to drop down over TOS apps? I'm still pining from the explosion of the former Yugoslavia, that took away my contact with Primoz Jakopin, author of STeve, the ST Event Editor. THAT was a diamond in the rough! Pity that he chose a unique interface, non-GEM w/o standard DA's. I was wondering if the Codeheads have solved that issue, I thought I'd read that they gave DA access to MegaPaint, which shared this lack of a menu bar in the native German version. True or rumor? C-ya, Matt ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 106 Sun Jun 06, 1993 SFRT-ASST [Kenne@SFRT] at 04:16 EDT Yes, there's DA access to Megapaint with a module. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 107 Sun Jun 06, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 13:02 EDT A.FASOLDT - I was just referring to STalker's BUILT-IN 'multitasking' capabilities. I have no idea about using it with MultiTOS. What I meant was that, using STalker's multitasking alone, some TOS programs (QGIF.TTP and DCopy v3.6 (even using its GEM shell), to name a few) cause STalker to halt whatever it's doing. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 108 Mon Jun 07, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 03:23 EDT Matt, I sent you a little shareware (or freeware, forgotten which) ACC-access program by email. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 109 Mon Jun 07, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 18:14 EDT David: "global memory access" is generally not desireable, since it means that any program can write into this program's memory. Some applications really do need this, though (for example, STalker and STeno want to be able to write each other's memory). If the program you're trying to run (or worse yet, the system!) crashes unexpectedly, try dragging the icon for that program onto CHPROT.APP. I use STalker for my telecommunications under MultiTOS, and it works very well. I've found that most "pure GEM" programs work OK with MultiTOS, as do many "pure TOS" ones -- it's the programs that try to mix low-level BIOS calls and high level GEM calls that tend to cause the most trouble. Unfortunately, a lot of telecommunications software is of the latter variety. I have heard that the author of CoNnect is working on a new, MultiTOS compatible version. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 110 Mon Jun 07, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 21:32 EDT Steve, That's DCOPY's fault, not STalker's. DCOPY does a lot of unfriendly things to other applications that are running in the system -- and I say this as a longtime fan of DCOPY, from the first versions to the last. QGIF I'm not sure about. I confess that the major use of modeming in the background in my systems has been to continue desktop operations and writing, that sort of thing, and STalker is excellent in that regard. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 111 Mon Jun 07, 1993 K.HOUSER [Kevin MQ Def] at 22:56 EDT SteveJ, The reason that STalker halts when some programs are executed is because the "multitasking" that GEM does in the AES is not pre-emptive. I don't believe the new AES (MultiTOS) is fully pre-emptive yet either. --Kevin ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 112 Tue Jun 08, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 01:28 EDT Kevin: MultiTOS is fully pre-emptive. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 113 Tue Jun 08, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 02:30 EDT There has been a lot of talk about the slowdown of the system when using MultiTOS. I am sure this question came up before, but I do not remember the answer. Is the slowdown only noticeable when the system is multitasking or is even there then it is single-tasking under MultiTOS? I am curious. Thanks. --Lou T.-- Written: Tuesday, June 08, 1993 01:38 a.m. EDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 114 Tue Jun 08, 1993 K.HOUSER [Kevin MQ Def] at 07:49 EDT Eric, Then why does everything grind to a halt when a menu is dropped, an Alert is called up, or a dialog's form_do is processing? Unless the latest version differs, the version of MTOS that I have on hand will not let other processes keep going when an AES routine is called & processing. I believe there should also be a HOT-Key that will allow you to FORCE an application to the background and select the current foreground process. I'm not bashing. I just feel that MTOS has a looooooooooong way to go. --Kevin ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 115 Tue Jun 08, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 10:38 EDT Lou - The windows and dialog boxes are visibly slow in MultiTOS, even with only a single application running. But, that's partially because Warp 9 doesn't work with MultiTOS, yet. Running a benchmark program (NBM) awhile back, I found that cpu things like math and memory moves ran at 60% of normal speed, with only the benchmark program loaded. Graphics were actually faster than cpu stuff - closer to 90% - which led me to believe that Atari had sped up the graphics routines some. Note: programs like Warp 9 bring graphics to 200%, so 90% seems slow. I have not benchmarked MultiTOS v1.0x, because it does not seem any faster. I assume it's about the same as the older version I checked. -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 116 Tue Jun 08, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 14:47 EDT Kevin, As Eric said, MultiTOS is fully pre-emptive. That means that if and when applications take full advantage of its new power, they will be able to interrupt other processes. But its "pre-emptivity" (?) can't work magic on existing software that simply uses the event system to wait its turn. This means that STalker will continue to work as it currently does, even under MultiTOS. Now all we need are some programmers who want to write some pre-emptive software. Jim Ness, If the CPU tests of a benchmark program are affected by resident software or video modes, it must not be setting the interrupt level to eliminate the overhead of TSRs in the traps. A math or memory test should be a test of raw CPU power. The code should freeze out all interrupts and give the same result with MultiTOS as with nothing installed. Or maybe NBM is showing some graphics while it's timing the CPU? (I don't know, I've never used it). This would also cause the results you mentioned. Are the CPU routines written in a tight assembly loop, with no system calls? John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 117 Tue Jun 08, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 20:43 EDT John E. - Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I didn't mean to indicate that graphics were slowing cpu tests down. Just that the best indicator of MultiTOS' effect on most of today's software is the two cpu tests that NBM does. The math and memory-move tests both showed about a 39% slowdown, compared to a singleTOS(tm) machine. The graphics test was NOT slowed down that much. To me, that meant that Atari had made some speedups in the new version of GEM, compensating for some of the MultiTOS burden. The dialog box draw, in particular, was very fast, for a non- Warp9 system. Again, all of this was with no ACC, AUTO or other apps loaded. -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 118 Tue Jun 08, 1993 ERIC.SMITH [Eric Smith] at 20:52 EDT Processing continues when an alert is called up, or a dialog is on screen, or whatever; however, during these operations the screen is typically "locked" by the application doing the dialog/alert/whatever, so only that application can actually do output to the screen. A spreadsheet or communication program can continue operating in the background while the screen is locked -- you just won't see their output until the dialog is finished. As for switching between applications: Control-Alt-Tab will let you cycle between GEM applications. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 119 Tue Jun 08, 1993 J.ROY18 [Jonathan] at 23:53 EDT Steve, TOS programs tend to stop STalker since GEM gets stopped when you run them... Nothing STalker can do about that. :) If, for example, Empire had a few event_multi() calls in it's AI routines, DL'ing with STalker would be fantastic while playing Empire... As it is, you can't do anything while the computer things... ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 120 Wed Jun 09, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 12:17 EDT Jim Ness, I don't get it. Why would the TOS make a difference to CPU tests? Aren't NBM's math and memory move tests suppose to evaluate CPU speed? Addition or removal of software shouldn't change this. (That's one of the things that bugs me about Quick Index -- the CPU tests change by a couple percent if you have a lot of resident software installed). If you're getting a difference of 39% by adding software (MultiTOS), that's exactly what puzzles me. Are NBM's CPU routines written in a tight assembly loop with a high interrupt level and no system calls? John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 121 Wed Jun 09, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 13:00 EDT I doubt that they are, John. The reason he is getting lower numbers for MultiTOS on CPU is that he is getting a time-slice just like the other processes in the system. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 122 Wed Jun 09, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 21:14 EDT John T, I guess I'm not making myself clear. If a test is supposed to measure CPU power, then all interrupts should be turned off (hmmm...I guess you'd still need a clock enabled) and a tight assembly loop should be executed. A test of this sort will not be affected by the present or lack of resident programs. I'm just inches from writing my "dream" benchmark program. Maybe I'll do it during my upcoming vacation. I'll be in the Midwest the next 2-1/2 weeks. John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 123 Thu Jun 10, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 00:19 EDT I agree. But, that test would have to have knowledge of how MiNT works.. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 124 Thu Jun 10, 1993 J.EIDSVOOG1 [CodeHead] at 05:15 EDT Well, then I guess I'll have to prove it can be done. It should _not_ require any knowledge of how MiNT operates or any other software that may be installed. It only would require that the programmer knows how the Atari works (I know someone who knows this :^)) and that the program takes control for a short time by raising the IPL level. How else could a valid test result be obtained? John P.S. I believe Doug Wheeler wrote a benchmark program that does this, but he never released it. (?) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 125 Thu Jun 10, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 08:29 EDT John - I believe the problem with NBM and MultiTOS is that MTOS eats up a lot of system cycles. I agree that both Quick Index and NBM allow the system to steal cycles. I think that's the way it SHOULD be, because the idea (at least MY idea) of benchmarks is to show a user how typical applications would be affected by the system being run. Typical applications are deeply affected by the OS. So, in this case, users can see how much MultiTOS slows a system down, compared to running without it. Or how much Warp 9 speeds a system up (at least the graphics portion of a system). Or, how TOS 1.4+ speeds disk access over TOS 1.0 and 1.2. It may be a misnomer to call it a "cpu test." You're right, it does not specifically test cpu speed. Actually, in NBM, it's simply called Math test and Memory test. There's certainly room for a program which, plain and simple, tests pure cpu speed, along with everying else. I'm just not sure how useful the results would be, for that specific test. Once a user runs that test on his/her machine, it never needs to be run again. The result would never change. My motivation for writing NBM was to allow the user to, over and over, test the changes he/she has made to the basic system. New TOS, more ACCs, different AUTOs, new hard drive, etc. Back to MultiTOS... I think it's the best OS enhancement Atari has come up with. Of course, a lot of credit goes to Eric, who did most of the work on his own, before Atari hired him. MultiTOS offers the user terrific enhancement of his/her machine. But it also affects the machine in the same way that MS-Windows affects a PC. It slows things down a bit. The point, for people considering buying MultiTOS, is that they be aware of its minuses, as well as its pluses. A Falcon with MultiTOS is OK. A TT is great. An ST is not fun. -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 127 Thu Jun 10, 1993 R.ALBRIGHT7 [Robb] at 15:06 EDT I remember seeing this covered in this topic a while back , but I cannot f find it., so I'll ask again: I bellieve it is possible under MTOS to limit the amoutnnt of memboory a progarram takes when it is run. How dfooes one go about this/???? Thanx, Robb (Veg) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 128 Thu Jun 10, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 15:36 EDT Actually, Eric did do alot of the work but people who used to be at Atari like Allan Pratt and Derek Mui also deserve alot of the credit as well. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 132 Sun Jun 13, 1993 K.HOUSER [Kevin MQ Def] at 01:46 EDT John, Just as long as you also include a test which does get CPU cycles stolen by timer driven software. :) That way I can spot check just how much speed my highspeed timer routines are taking from day to day program operations. --Kevin ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 133 Thu Jun 17, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Jim] at 01:33 EDT I recently tried MultiTOS on my TT at home and I looks great. But as you probably guessed i have a few problems. Steno refuses to load a file, as soon as the file is loaded it gives the following alert, Type: hardware PC:00E0D712 Addr: 004049F8 BP:000A0000 I have a several programs give me similiar alerts, and a goodly number of the "adjust debug level" message. This is MINT 1.4 and i was just looknig for some feedback. As a side note, you should be sure that you include the new versions of the control panel and CPXs with the MultiTOS commercial release. Specifically the Windows colors CPX and it's support for background gadgets. Jim. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 134 Thu Jun 17, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 07:42 EDT Jim, Did you try STeno as a PRG or DA? (And how's business in Rochester? I miss one of my favorite little stores. Syracuse isn't too far away; I'll have to come by again.) Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 135 Fri Jun 18, 1993 D.SHORR at 18:52 EDT I've been using MultiTOS on my dealer's demo Falcon030 and would like to report the following: printing a file from the desktop requires over a MEG of memory! The file in question(AFM.DOC) was very small, about 10K; there were no other programs running and the number of active AUTO programs and accessories was small. Why does LPR require so much memory??? The MultiTOS Quickstart guide mentions that accessories can be loaded simply by double-clicking on them, but on this Falcon they are still recognized as documents. How do I fix this? Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 136 Fri Jun 18, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 23:27 EDT Dave, If MutliTOS behaves the way MINT does -- and I believe it does -- it uses a GEM.CNF file. Within that ASCII file is a line that indicates what types of file it can execute, and what types are desk accessories. It should be able to execute a desk accessory if you tell it when it boots up that a DA is executable. Here's parrt of a sample GEM.CNF: # gem.cnf # ================================================================= setenv PATH=.,C:\SYSTEM\RES1,C:\SYSYTEM\RES2 setenv ACCPATH=C:\ACC setenv ACCEXT=ACC,ACX setenv GEMEXT=PRG,APP,GTP setenv TOSEXT=TOS,TTP Try putting ACC in the GEMEXT and see what happens... (My experience here is not with MultiTOS but with something else that uses the GEM.CNF, so I could be wrong about the way MultiTOS handles it.) Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 137 Sat Jun 19, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Jim] at 01:23 EDT Al, Business is good, even with everybody and there aunt selling computers. I tried Steno as a program but will have to try it as an ACC. To all TT owners, Has anyone else had problems with the TT bombimg (2 bombs) with certain programs. Aladin for example, when exiting i sometimes get two bombs. I was wondering if the Xcontrol panel with CPXs is the problem. Any experiences? Jim. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 138 Sat Jun 19, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 02:57 EDT Jim, I'm in my second day of messing around with MultiTOS, and here is what I have found: STalker bombs when I try to dial out. I've only tried it as a program so I don't know if it will run as a DA under MTOS. I've found that ARCShell doesn't work at all. However, I was able to drag an ARC or LZH file over to it's respective TTP file, and MTOS would automatically execute MINIWIN and the files would extract correctly. The only problem is that they extract into the directory of LZH.TTP or ARC.TTP. I'm sure there is probably some environment variable that I could set up to put those extracted files in my C:\UNARC\ path. I haven't had any problems with Aladdin bombing on me. However, it is _very_ slow on my end. I don't think I've had any bombs yet, as a matter of fact. I've had the computer just hang (mostly with STalker), and I've had the 'adjust debug level' message once or twice. ALERT.ACC catches most of the 'bad' programs when you launch them, and kills them right away. So far, I'm pretty impressed. I like the new AES. Not just the 3D icons and what not, but colored dialogs, a redesigned file selector, etc. BTW - I'm using a TT030 with TOS 3.06, 4 megs TT RAM, 4 megs ST RAM. Also, I've noticed something very annoying. I think it has to do with XCONTROL. My mouseform gets screwed up all the time and is in the form of a bee when it should be a pointer. It happened every once in a while before I got MTOS, but it happens just about every time I access the control panel with MTOS. Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 139 Sat Jun 19, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 03:29 EDT Dave, >The MultiTOS Quickstart guide mentions that accessories can be loaded simply >by double-clicking on them, but on this Falcon they are still recognized as >documents. How do I fix this? add the following to your newdesk.inf file: #A 03 04 000 *.ACC@ @ @ And it will work. AL, >Try putting ACC in the GEMEXT and see what happens... Please NO ! That won't work, it will cause a crash. Regards, Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 140 Sat Jun 19, 1993 D.SHORR at 10:00 EDT Al, Thanks for the tip; I'll try it next time I'm at my dealer. Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 141 Sat Jun 19, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 11:22 EDT Jim, Most of the bombing I had with the TT for the first few months of ownership were traceable to fast-load flags on prgs and DAs. All the FL flags should be off, period. I can always get a bomb from some prgs on exit if I merely set the FL bit to on. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 142 Sat Jun 19, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 12:43 EDT Whoops! Thanks, Wilfred! Dave, Do what Wilfred says; I withdaw my suggestion! Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 143 Sat Jun 19, 1993 R.ALBRIGHT7 [Robb] at 13:09 EDT I asked a couple of weeks ago, but haven't heard a response yet, so I'll try again. How do you limit the amount of memory a program "grabs" when it runs under MTOS?? Is it in the mint.cnf file, or what? Thanx, Robb ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 144 Sat Jun 19, 1993 D.SHORR at 16:48 EDT Robb, Type MAXMEM=n (measured in kilobytes) into your MINT.CNF file. You can also create aliases for paths in this config file. I obtained this info from the MiNT docs(which should be available here). Dave ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 145 Sun Jun 20, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Jim] at 00:56 EDT Chris, You need to get version 1.2 of the control panel along with all the CPXs (some new versions, so not) and your pointer problem will go away. You will also need the new windows colors CPx to set up the "backed" windows gadgets. Jim. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 146 Sun Jun 20, 1993 STEVE-J [Steve @ NLS] at 10:03 EDT A.FASOLDT - Yes, that's what I said -- that some programs CAUSE STalker to halt (not that STalker was to blame at all). ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 147 Sun Jun 20, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 17:20 EDT Jim, Do you know where we can get version 1.2 of the Control Panel? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 148 Sun Jun 20, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 21:59 EDT Ed, I will ask Bob about version 1.2 of the control panel. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Sunday 20 June 1993 at 09:55 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 149 Mon Jun 21, 1993 ATARIAUSTRIA [J.Widi] at 03:21 EDT Robb, You're right, it is in MINT.CFG. Just add a line like MAXMEM=1024 which specifies the maximum amount of memory (in kilobytes) that may be used by a program. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 150 Tue Jun 22, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 03:52 EDT Jim, Is version 1.2 of XControl available? I haven't seen it. Is that version shipping on the Falcon030? I do have all of the latest revs of the CPX's. Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 151 Wed Jun 23, 1993 J.RENNER1 [Jim] at 02:45 EDT Chris, Yes, it is shipping with the Falcon. Hopefully it will be release into the PD soon, or at least included with the MultiTOS upgrade for all of ST/TT users (Hint Hint Atari!). The old CP had problems with the new AES and the windows color CPX didn't allow for setting the colors on background windows gradets. The new one is wonderful. Jim. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 152 Wed Jun 23, 1993 L.TRAPANI [Lou][Machine] at 20:52 EDT Ed and Chris, I have seen Xcontrol 1.2 on some systems (I don't remember if it was here on GEnie)... but it was an all german version. --Lou T.-- Written: Wednesday, June 23, 1993 03:26 p.m. EDT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 153 Thu Jun 24, 1993 C.SERVIN3 at 23:32 EDT Is it posible to get the MINIWIN.APP that runs TOS apps in a window to autoclose the window the way that TOSWIN.ACC would? I tried manually adding autoclose 0001 to the MINIWIN.CNF file, but that didn't work. Thanks, Craig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 154 Fri Jun 25, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 23:34 EDT Okay, folks: What is the secret to getting STalker to run under MultiTOS? It crashes when I run it as either a DA or PRG. I have both TT RAM flags set, but not the fastload bit. Since purchasing MTOS, my TSR's have been reduced to Outburst, Mouse Accelerator 3, v 4.0, and MiNT v 1.4. My only DA's are ALERT and XCONTROL 1.0. (hint hint) STalker seems to _want_ to run, because it will load, and allow me to dial, but usually crashes right there. Very strange... Also, I've noticed a problem with using Outburst converted printer drivers under PageStream. It makes for very interesting results on my laser. I guess I'll move over to the Outburst topic to see if anyone else is having the same problem. Can anyone point me to a specific file that contains information about tweaking the mint.cnf file? I browsed a couple of the latest MINT uploads, but I couldn't find one that specifically said it contained the documentation. Thanks! Chris Cassaday TOS 3.06 4 Megs TT RAM 4 Megs ST RAM ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 155 Sun Jun 27, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 02:49 EDT Chris, I don't have a Falcon, but I recall that someone pointed out that the global flag needs to be set for STalker to run properly. Do you have NeoDesk 3.03? It allows access to all the extra flags. If not, try one of the utilities that come with MINT or MultiTOS. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 156 Sun Jun 27, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 23:03 EDT Okay, I used CHPROT to change the global access flag on STalker and it runs fine as a DA under MultiTOS. I am happy now. All I need is an icon editor... Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 157 Mon Jun 28, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 01:07 EDT Al, Yes, I own NeoDesk 3.03 but I haven't been using it much lately. I've owned it (v 3.01) since 10/90. However, since getting TOS 3.06, my usage of NeoDesk has dropped considerably. Now that you mention it, I haven't been able to figure out how to get NeoDesk to load under MTOS. As soon as the rates change, I'll take this conversation up with you in the NeoDesk topic. [:) Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 158 Mon Jun 28, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 14:06 EDT I've started to wonder if the memory protection feature of MultiTOS will be entirely unused, because everyone will be changing the mem. prot. flags on all their programs... ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 159 Mon Jun 28, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 17:43 EDT Chris, I wasn't suggesting you run Neo 3.03 under MTOS. (That wouldn't make much sense, for various reasons.) But alternative desktops such as HotWire, Neo 3.03 and TeraDesk offer you a LOT of improvements over TOS 3.06. Take a look at my Secrets of NeoDesk if you haven't already, and you'll see some obvious advantages over the TOS desktop. MTOS is not a finished OS, from what I can glean. It will improve. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 160 Tue Jun 29, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 01:22 EDT Okay, next question: What type of fonts work with MINIWIN? Old style GDOS monospaced fonts? Speedo fonts? I'd like to mess around with MINIWIN a little and this seems like the first step. Jim Renner, v 1.2 is not the latest rev of XCONTROL. 1.3 is... My MultiTOS pack came with an extras disk that had the Talking Clock, Landmines, ProCalc, the latest CPX's, and XCONTROL 1.3. Not only that, but it had an ASCII ad for GEnie as well. Nice job Atari. Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 161 Tue Jun 29, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 02:30 EDT Jim Ness, An interesting thought. However, I think it would be dis-advantageous to write something that didn't take advantage of the PIPES in MTOS to share information between programs. It seems like a better way of communicating altogether. Then again, it may just be a pipe dream. (ugh) Do STalker and STeno use shel_write and shel_read to write directly to each others memory, or is it just that - writing directly to each others memory? I'm glad that STalker is a pretty solid program, otherwise I wouldn't feel too comfortable running it with memory protection tured off. Al, Trouble is, even if I wanted to - I can't get NeoDesk to load under MTOS. The 3.03 update mentioned something about setting NeoDesk as a default shell program, but like Towns said, the MultiTOS "Quick Start" manual doesn't give much indepth information on configuring MTOS. Yes, I've read your Secrets of NeoDesk, and liked it quite a bit. Learned a few things, too. My biggest benefit was learning about GEMENV by Ian Lepore. However, without getting into a big debate over the merits of NewDesk/NeoDesk; I just find 3.06 to *work* for me. Don't get me wrong, I still think of NeoDesk as a fantastic program and I will gladly pay whatever amount to see NeoDesk 4. MTOS is finished enough for me right now. I can run STalker, Aladdin, PageStream, Paula ][, and any of a variety of other random line/clock/whiz- bang programs nicely in 8 megs of RAM. I agree though, it isn't "finished." (If there is such a thing.) All I need is my UIS3, Warp 9, and an icon editor.... and this paddle game, and this lamp. [:^) Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 162 Tue Jun 29, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 17:04 EDT Chris - I never bought the STalker dev kit, so I don't know how STalker and STeno (or STalker and EdHak) pass text. I know that EdHak has a method which Craig Harvey and I worked out to pass text to/from my own program. It involves using evnt_message to pass addresses back and forth. Then going in and boldly stealing the text from within each other's memory space. A MultiTOS no-no. EdHak also supports the scrap file method. Slow, but official. From what I've heard, STalker/STeno pass text strings, rather than an entire body of text. That allows STeno to keep a capture file of STalker online sessions, as they arrive. -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 163 Tue Jun 29, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 21:54 EDT Chris, Sounds like someone ought to upload the latest Xcontrol here, with Atari's blessing, of course. I can't see how Atari would object, if it was accompanied by any documentation that comes with it. And you made a good point about MTOS being finished enough for your use. It's slow, though, so there obviously is some room for improvement. Multitasking on the TT and the Falcon does not need to be such a slow process. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 164 Tue Jun 29, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 22:11 EDT Al, The new version of XControl is being looked into. When approval is reach, don't ask for details, it will be uploaded. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Tuesday 29 June 1993 at 11:09 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 165 Wed Jun 30, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 23:10 EDT Al: > Multitasking on the TT and the Falcon does not need to be such a > slow process. If you knew how much work MultiTOS was doing to try to remain moderately compatible, you wouldn't complain so much about the speed. Still, you've got a point. It /does/ seem a little slower than it should be. -dmj ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 166 Thu Jul 01, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 09:57 EDT Is Mac multitasking on the 68000 and 68030 different than the kind of multitasking that Mint does? The Mac multitasking seems quicker and more reliable. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 167 Thu Jul 01, 1993 GRIBNIF [Dan] at 13:18 EDT Um, Al, why not run NeoDesk 3.03 under MultiTOS? I do it all the time. It's far better than the desktop included with MultiTOS in my (oh-so-unbiased ) opinion. Chris, The important thing is to have NEOLOAD.PRG in your AUTO folder *before* MINT.PRG. Then, you can set NEOLOAD.PRG (in the NEODESK3 folder) to autorun, or add the following line to GEM.CNF: shell c:\neodeesk3\neoload.prg You will also have to make sure that you have the extension "EXE" set in GEMEXT (again, in GEM.CNF): setenv GEMEXT=PRG,APP,GTP,EXE STalker and STeno write directly to each other's memory, which is why they need to have their memory protection flags set to Global. Dan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 168 Thu Jul 01, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 17:57 EDT Damien, As a long-time beta tester for a competing system, I *do* know. It *is* slower than it needs to be. Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 169 Thu Jul 01, 1993 A.FASOLDT [Al Fasoldt] at 19:15 EDT Mac Multitasking resembles Geneva multitasking. Like Geneva, Mac multitasking is faster than MultiTOS's multitasking. But unlike the Mac's system, the Geneva system is preemptive. Dan, Why run NeoDesk udner MultiTOS when you can run it under something that's fast AND multitasks? :) Al ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 170 Thu Jul 01, 1993 K.HOUSER [Kevin MQ Def] at 21:45 EDT Al, Tell us more about Geneva. :) Purty puhleeeez. --Kevin ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 171 Thu Jul 01, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 21:57 EDT Goodness. I knew MultiTOS was preemptive, and I found out last week that Windows was not. I'd expected a real preemptive multitasking system from Microsoft, but that's another story. But now to find out that the Mac system is ALSO non-preemptive? Sheesh... what are operating system programmers doing? Picking their noses instead of programming? At least we have a real preemptive multitasking OS for the Atari. Hmmm, I guess it should be TWO real systems now, huh? -dmj ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 172 Fri Jul 02, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 01:28 EDT Dan, Thanks. That was most helpful. I'd like to play around with NeoDesk a little under MTOS to see how it works. And maybe Geneva, too. (grin) Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 173 Fri Jul 02, 1993 J.NESS [Jim] at 15:45 EDT DMJ - OS/2 and the "real-soon-now" Windows NT are pre-emptive. Existing Windows through v3.1 are time-slicers. Works just fine for me. -JN ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 174 Fri Jul 02, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 21:17 EDT >Is Mac multitasking on the 68000 and 68030 different than the kind of >multitasking that Mint does? The Mac multitasking seems quicker and >more reliable. Just what kind of "Mac multitasking" have you done? I work on a 20meg IIcx (System 7.1) all day and I never multitask. It's all task-switching. And if the computer was multitasking, it'd be darned slow! It's slow enough as it is. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 175 Sat Jul 03, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 00:00 EDT All of the applications running under Windows multitask by surrendering control back to the system _voluntarily_. Windows _never_ interrupts a program. All in all, it's not too different from how GEM works. As I said, I expected something better from Microsoft. As for NT, well, IF they can get it working right, maybe I'll give them a little credit. OS/2 is a _real_ multitasking system--and I never said it wasn't. -dmj ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 176 Sat Jul 03, 1993 JLHOFFMAN [John Hoffman] at 05:41 EDT Ed, The mac does multitask. Try running zmodem and doing a download while editing in word and uncompressing an archie. They all happen simultaneously. The old multifinder in system 6.x was a task switch but system 7.0 does multitask. But as was pointed out without memory protection and non pre-emptive. Heck nowdays I find my mac crashes even more regularly than my PC. But both of them crash... John ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 177 Sat Jul 03, 1993 J.BRIGHAM at 21:12 EDT Is it ready for release to the public yet? Brig ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 178 Sat Jul 03, 1993 BRIAN.H [ST~SysOp] at 21:29 EDT Birg, in the landing topic, someone mention that ATY, I think, have sold out on MTOS. I have no idea how many they had. I guess at least one [grin]. ~~~~Brian ... Written on Saturday 03 July 1993 at 10:29 p.m. ADT ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 179 Sat Jul 03, 1993 AEO.5 [Ed Krimen] at 22:07 EDT >Atari-ST RoundTable >The mac does multitask. Try running zmodem and doing a download >while editing n word and uncompressing an archie. They all happen >simultaneously. The old I didn't say the Mac didn't multitask. I said that -I- didn't multitask on it; I use it more for task switching since the programs I use require my input. Of course, when they're thinking, they lock up the machine. Watch the world go 'round. :-) ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 180 Sun Jul 04, 1993 LEXICOR2 at 09:55 EDT I was at Mid-Cities Computers yesterday and they have MTOS for sale. I should be getting one next week. Ringo ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 181 Sun Jul 04, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 23:28 EDT Adventures in the Wonderful World of the Falcon's MULTIMEDIA & MultiTos One of the uses I looked forward to in the purchase of a Falcon was the ablity to use a multimedia device, the CD-ROM drive. Just look at the way multimedia applications are proliferating on IBM and Mac platforms and we all know what a MULTIMEDIA wonder the Falcon is because the folks at Atari told us so. Well, when I first had the Falcon I loaded up MultiTos a few times just to see how it was working (just fine), but since one program at a time is all I can handle anyway, it was put aside. I tried the CD-ROM files that come with ICD's pro package, but they don't do a thing on the Falcon. Called ICD, talked to Howard and he said it's a lot easier to run MetaDos and the CD-ROM drives in MultiTos. Tom from ICD said they worked on this RT and on the phone to my dealer. That reawakened an interest in MultiTos, although it seemed an odd solution. But guess what? MultiTos wouldn't load at this point. No, the system stopped in its tracks and presented the following helpful message: pid 1(AESSYS) memory violation type=free AA=3D7FFC PC=E10584 BP=96008 pid 1(AESSYS) operating system killed FATAL MiNT ERROR: adjust debug level and hit a key... Posted a help! message in the Falcon topic but got no reply. Sent off to B.Rehbock who eventually inquired what I had in my auto folder and what DCs. Told him, but haven't heard anymore. Tried reinstalling four times, including with all else out of the auto folder...no dice. MultiTos seemed a dead end for CD-ROM drives. Okay. Some while back the Compo IBM emulator was mentioned on the RT and it was said to handle VGA color. My dealer was delighted, especially when this was confirmed to him by COMPO. I was happy at hearing that WINDOWS provide a CD-ROM drive! I had looked at those IBM CD-ROM disks with envy and so, maybe until Atari caught up, here was a solution. Yesterday I became the first kid on the block to have the new emulator. And I bought WINDOWS 3 (can't believe I actually bought a MS program...retch...but at least MS has done for CD-ROM drives what Atari has not been able to do) and a book on DOS for Dummies. Had a wretched time last night learning a smattering of MS-Dos to set things up on the Falcon only to find at the end of the COMPO manual...SUPRISE! Compo's emulator does NOT support VGA color, only CGA and VGA mono. (Hell to pay after the 4th ...anyone want WINDOWS 3 on the cheap?) I had to reformat and repartition the Falcon HD to handle the IBM thing and decided to reinstall MultiTos. Another surprise! It works. But a new problem...just how do MetaDos and the drivers work at all, much less easier under MultiTos? MiNT has to load last, and MetaDos won't install the drivers before it. Try loading MetaDos and drivers after MiNT is installed and you get a message similar to the arcane one above. It would be nice if information such as this were provided bacKward users such as my self. (Curious side note: while the Falcon was at my dealers yesterday, a young hacker who uses MultiTos on his Mega STe got interested in the problem. He couldn't figure out why it wouldn't load either on the 1224 monitor, but at one point to look at things in better resolution, he tried it with a 124 monitor and moved MultiTos up so that it loaded first, not last, and in that instance it loaded! ?) Other discoveries with MultiTos: it evidently doesn't like XBOOT3 and says it's illegal. Doesn't like Steno either: runs it, but then says it too is illegal. And the cruelest cut of all, MultiTos hates the excellent Speed of Light which was my program of choice to view the .GIF pics on the CD-ROM. Consequently, I don't much like MultiTos. I think I've tried to do as much as a user can to realize Atari's multimedia wonder. Any chance Atari will? Writing this has helped to exorcize some of the hate and frustration that runs beneath the calm surface of this message. Thanks for reading, Stan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 182 Sun Jul 04, 1993 C.OATES2 [Chris] at 23:50 EDT Glad you at least got MTOS to work finally... Sure had me stumped. (Young hacker? I guess that's a compliment. :) ~Chris P.S. I just checked, and my MTOS does load last, so I guess the manual was right. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 183 Mon Jul 05, 1993 R.WATSON15 [Wayne Watson] at 03:31 EDT I would like to see a CDROM driver for all the computers WITHOUT MULTITOS having to be loaded. MultiTos just slows things down. Why do we have to deal with MultiTos JUST TO GET A CDROM DRIVER? Can't Atari do something as simple as that. When are the Atari users finally going to have CDROM capability reliably? In the mean time, IBM and other platforms are enjoying the wonderful world of CDROM stuff. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 184 Mon Jul 05, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 03:40 EDT Stan, See also my Email to you ! > >I tried the CD-ROM files that come with ICD's pro package, but they don't do a >thing on the Falcon. Called ICD, talked to Howard and he said it's a lot >easier to run MetaDos and the CD-ROM drives in MultiTos. Tom from ICD said >they worked on this RT and on the phone to my dealer. That reawakened an >interest in MultiTos, although it seemed an odd solution. I don't think that MetaDOS will run under MultiTOS and it WON'T support the Falcon030 SCSI port. > >But guess what? MultiTos wouldn't load at this point. No, the system stopped >in its tracks and presented the following helpful message: > >pid 1(AESSYS) memory violation type=free AA=3D7FFC PC=E10584 BP=96008 pid >1(AESSYS) operating system killed FATAL MiNT ERROR: adjust debug level and hit >a key... I understand this if you tried to run metados since that probable changed some pointers. It also can be caused by something in your AUTO folder (Desk ACC are not active at that moment) BUT most likely MiNT couldn't find its config files or GEM.SYS file. By default it will search in c:\multitos, c:\ and probable c:\mint. If it won't find GEM.SYS it crashes the way you descriped. >Okay. Some while back the Compo IBM emulator was mentioned on the RT and it >was said to handle VGA color. My dealer was delighted, especially when this >was confirmed to him by COMPO. I was happy at hearing that WINDOWS provide a >CD-ROM drive! I had looked at those IBM CD-ROM disks with envy and so, maybe >until Atari caught up, here was a solution. The first release came out without color driver. Why don't you ask Compo for an update. >Other discoveries with MultiTos: it evidently doesn't like XBOOT3 and says >it's illegal. Doesn't like Steno either: runs it, but then says it too is >illegal. And the cruelest cut of all, MultiTos hates the excellent Speed of >Light which was my program of choice to view the .GIF pics on the CD-ROM. >Consequently, I don't much like MultiTos. If you RUN XBOOT before MiNT comes up there should be no problem. Isn't Xboot supposed to be the first PRG in the AUTO folder ? Regards, Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 185 Mon Jul 05, 1993 B.GOCKLEY [Brian G.] at 12:38 EDT There is a company called "It's all Relative" that is releasing a CD ROM viewer/scripter/sound adder called Virtual Bookmaker. TheirATDT1,914-248-7058; ATH number on GEnie is GREG. Send him E-Mail to find out more. Brian G. @ ST Informer Magazine ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 186 Mon Jul 05, 1993 H.WOLFE1 [Harvey] at 12:39 EDT For some time I have been following the MultiTos topic. I did manage to get a look at a developer's beta version some time ago and I had a number of concerns about it. However, I realized that this was only a beta version, which is why I was looking forward to seeing the finished version, and purchasing it if it met my requirements. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of telling if it is ever going to arrive in Toronto, Canada in the forseeable future, so I've finally decided to ask some questions here. 1. In spite of the fact that he was running it on a TT, it did not seem to be all that crash resistant. It was my impression that it was supposed to use the memory protection in the 68030 chip. Is the final version almost crash proof or are there a fair number of programs which will either crash the entire system or cause the cursor to lock up? 2. Does the final version work with either Wordperfect or Superbase or LDW Power or UIS or LGFS or Maxifile? None of these programs would run on the beta version and some even crashed MultiTos in spite of the fact that it was on a TT030 with memory protection. Actually, now that I think of it, LDW Power did not exactly crash the computer. Instead it seemed to lock up the cursor sooner or later. 4. Is there some way of prioritizing system usage with MultiTos? I am asking because on my TT, STalker can easily download at 14400 baud in the background with no problems. However, when I tried it on the beta of MultiTos, the maximum speed, if anything else was being done, seemed to be about 700 or 800 baud with a fair number of error messages. Even if I did absolutely nothing else with the computer, the maximum speed was only about 1000 baud. This seemed to be due to the fact that there was no way to give STalker a higher priority. In fact one of the programs the developer had showed that every time STalker tried to get a higher priority it was knocked back to the standard zero level again. Thank you, Harvey Wolfe ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 187 Mon Jul 05, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 15:48 EDT Hasty and abject apologies to Compo for comment on the IBM emulator. Took a chance and phoned my dealer today....sure enough as a dedicated Atari only dealer he is open on a holiday. He reports that while the basic MS-DOS emulation does not provide VGA color support, those good guys at COMPO assure him installing Windows does. Gee, gg's, I wish there had been a reference to that nifty nugget in the text, but I know a better manual is in the works. Now to installing Window 3...should be complete sometime by the end of the year. Stan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 188 Mon Jul 05, 1993 R.BUSH [Richard Bush] at 17:39 EDT Dan, I tried everything you outlined in message 167 and I still can't get NeoDesk to run. Neoload is before Mint. I tried both setting Neoload in the NEODESK3 folder to autorun AND adding the "shell c:..." line to the GEM.CNF file. I also added EXE to the GEMEXT line. Nothing works. What am I missing? ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 189 Mon Jul 05, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 17:57 EDT Chris... "young hacker"...that is most definitely a compliment... wait until you're my age, and you have to be as computer dim to realize it. W. Kilwinger: gosh, you're a helpful guy. Thanks. Awaiting your Email. Re: MetaDos and the Falcon: I was going by the message posted on the RT from, I believe, Tom of ICD that you responded to with a "glad to hear it" comment. Re: the MultiTos failure to load... I suspected that MegaDos might be the culprit and perhaps some other favorite programs (i.e. Multifile only partially compatible on the FALCON...lord, I miss the CodeHead way of doing things), but even with all these X'd out, MultiTos refused entry. Re: that error message, as helpful as anything in MS-Dos: wouldn't it be nice if MT said instead something as comprehensible as "can't find config. files" or "can't locate GEM.SYS file", if that was the case? In cynical moments I have the impression that programmers, in part at least, don't write programs for users, but for other programmers. Re: XBOOT. When MultiTos was up and running, I gingerly added XBOOT, taking care it was first and MT last. MT, somehow, refused to let it load somehow and I got a quick message about "XBOOT illegal something or other". I removed it pronto before MT became tempermental again. Re: VGA color support. Covered in my last message. Whew. Now to face the horrors of Windows and its installation. Hope my new volume, DOS for Dummies, pulls me through. America is truely the land of unlimited (and uncritical) opportunity, for only here could a convuluted, cumbersome system such as MS- DOS seize the market and [name deleted out of consideration] be president for two terms. Please forgive my ignorance, but what is ATARI.BENLUX? And thanks again. Brian G. Thanks much for the info. Very pleasing! Then I can retain my IBM emulator to sneer at the lemmings who say; "Atari what?" as they dash past, nose to tush, into the DEEP BLUE SEA and perish, impaled on >'s awaiting them there. my best Stan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 190 Mon Jul 05, 1993 TOWNS [John] at 18:14 EDT If I remember right, MetaDOS isn't compatible with MultiTOS. Maybe Eric Smith will show up here soon and let us know for sure. However, you should talk to Bob Brodie or someone else here online to get the MultiTOS CD-ROM driver. That driver should work with your system. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 191 Mon Jul 05, 1993 FAIRWEATHER [David] at 18:35 EDT Ditto to what Richard Bush said Dan. The neodesk/mint directions you gave didn't work for me either. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 192 Tue Jul 06, 1993 COMPO at 01:02 EDT Stan - Atari Benlux is Wilfred from Atari Holland. Thanks for commenting on Falcon Speed, Wilfred... NOW - I've been out for a couple days and just saw your messages. Horror of horrors! Firstly, the version you have received is the first American release, and we don't have any updates yet. Secondly, we have always said that Falcon Speed will support VGA color under Windows. The "Windows" part is the important bit. (There are technical reasons why we cannot do it under DOS). Thirdly, special VGA drivers are provided on your Falcon Speed master disk, as well as a read me file on how to install and use them. The manuals were done some time ago and need to be updated. In the interest of getting Falcon Speed out the door we have included the older manuals and several readme files. Although all of the information is complete and accurate, we will be printing new manuals. Let me know if you want one (like I said, there won't be any new information). Lastly, let me know if you have any problems installing Windows or understanding the WINDOWS.DOC file (with installation instructions). TIP - Windows will automatically install Smartdrive in your autoexec.bat file, which you should REM out at first... Smartdrive doesn't work on all machines so I suggest that you first run Windows and make sure everything is swell before trying to use a disk cache. That's it. It really is super-simple, so you should be up and running in no time. Please let us know how Falcon Speed works out - and I hope you enjoy it. Back to your regularly scheduled topic... Thanks, Robert ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 193 Tue Jul 06, 1993 T.THOMPSON26 [Tom T.] at 01:47 EDT If you like to lose the occasional character Steno and Stalker work together to pass information! ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 194 Tue Jul 06, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 01:59 EDT John! Thanks! There is a MultiTos CD-ROM driver? That's one of the best kept secrets at ATARI. Didn't want to overwhelm the competetion all at once I guess. Now for a non-MultiTos driver. my best Stan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 195 Tue Jul 06, 1993 S.FARWIG [STAN] at 02:22 EDT Robert @ Compo Thanks for your message. Actually the installation of WINDOWS went smooth as silk, thanks to your excellent READ ME file and, I must admit, WINDOWS installation program. And I must admit, much as I have held my nose when IBM and MS come up, having that DOS screen and WINDOWS appear on the monitor does give one a heady feeling of power. And. as far as I can tell, the emulator works great. But Robert, I am still frustrated in my purpose for buying it... getting a CD_ROM driver for the Falcon since Atari hasn't gotten around to it and I was told WINDOWS provides one. One problem is, the emulation does do VGA color...a whole 16 of them. Not much help trying to view .GIF and better. Or finally being able to use those CD-ROM disks out for the IBM. Will the emulator break the 16 color barrier in a future update? Please. The other one is getting the IBM thingy to recognize partitions beyond the four on the FALCON. But I've just scratched the surface of the WINDOWS manual. My! WINDOWS is certainly ladened (or is it burdened) with features. Also got the Screenblaster and a problem...opps! Oh yes, did you see the message from John about A MultiTos driver? my best Stan ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 196 Tue Jul 06, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 04:00 EDT Harvey and Stan, <* Long Message Warning *> >1. In spite of the fact that he was running it on a TT, it did >not seem to be all that crash resistant. It was my impression that >it was supposed to use the memory protection in the 68030 chip. Is >the final version almost crash proof or are there a fair number of >programs which will either crash the entire system or cause the >cursor to lock up? I am using MultiTOS on a TT030, and I don't see as many bombs as some others have reported. If a program crashes, the ALERT ACC reports that the program was killed and gives some debugging information. Two especially problematic programs are the SDS Clipboard and SDS Icon Editor. These two CPX's have always been erratic on my system, and whenever they crash under MultiTOS, XCONTROL gets taken out. Everything else continues just fine. (And thanks to Wilfred's suggestion, all I do to reload XCONTROL is double click on it. I have actually only the "Fatal MiNT error/Adjust debug level" error two or three times. I can't even remember the circumstances under which they occured. The release version of MultiTOS comes with a CPX that allows you to turn off memory protection. Perhaps he didn't have memory protection turned on? As for other programs - some don't load, some do. Usually you'll get a "Failed to launch XXXX" message if something right off the bat doesn't work with MTOS. STalker used to cause my system to hang under MultiTOS, but that problem was solved after changing its global access flag. Some other programs may require you to do this. >2. Does the final version work with either Wordperfect or >Superbase or LDW Power or UIS or LGFS or Maxifile? None of these >programs would run on the beta version and some even crashed >MultiTos in spite of the fact that it was on a TT030 with memory >protection. Actually, now that I think of it, LDW Power did not >exactly crash the computer. Instead it seemed to lock up the cursor >sooner or later. I don't have LDW Power or Word Perfect, so I can't help you with that. OTOH, I did lose quite a few of my TSR's when I bought MTOS. I used to run UIS_III, Warp9_TT, FORMDOIT, JARXXX, and NEOLOAD, plus others; now I'm reduced to just OutBurst. I'm kinda ticked about losing UIS_III and Warp9_TT, and as soon as I get finished with my user groups newsletter (produced entirely under MultiTOS with PageStream! [:^) I'll head over to those respective topics and see what kind of mess I can stir up. OutBurst works fine under MultiTOS; except if you use an OutBurst converted printer driver. (Or rather I should say: the HPLASER driver I converted with Outburst prints garbage under MTOS.) If you switch back to the normal HPLASER driver, it prints fine. However, the overhead of MultiTOS cuts into Outburst's performance. I haven't timed it yet to see what the difference is. >4. Is there some way of prioritizing system usage with MultiTos? >I am asking because on my TT, STalker can easily download at 14400 >baud in the background with no problems. However, when I tried it >on the beta of MultiTos, the maximum speed, if anything else was >being done, seemed to be about 700 or 800 baud with a fair number of >error messages. Even if I did absolutely nothing else with the >computer, the maximum speed was only about 1000 baud. This seemed >to be due to the fact that there was no way to give STalker a higher >priority. In fact one of the programs the developer had showed that >every time STalker tried to get a higher priority it was knocked >back to the standard zero level again. I can't figure out the "adaptive priortization" "feature" of MultiTOS, either. I was under the impression from the descriptions of it that you could change each programs priority, but I can't see any way of doing that. Looking into the U:\PROC\ section tells you which programs are running, and how much memory each one is taking up, but nothing about its priority. (Unless it has something to do with the order in which they are listed. However, I have noticed that they always appear in the order in which you launch them.) 700 or 800 baud? Perhaps you mean 700 or 800 cps? At 14.4K baud, you should be getting roughly 1400 cps (without compression). Just for grins and giggles, I usually run the following programs when I use MultiTOS: LINES.APP CLOCK.APP LANDMINE.APP PROCALC.APP TLKCLOCK.APP PGS2.APP PAULA.APP ALAD.PRG XCONTROL.ACC STALKER.ACC and ALERT.ACC. I did an upload to a local BBS at 2400 baud (I need a new modem, ugh.) and received a (roughly) 90% efficiency rating using Zmodem. That translates to about 200 - 210 cps. Maybe you were calling GEnie when you did that background file transfer? (grin) Hope that helps some. Overall, I like it. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it will get better. BTW, running all the programs I mentioned earlier can really cut down on system performance. I use Paula to play MOD files at 50 Khz in the background and it never misses a beat. However, screen redraws are dog slow. Hopefully an MTOS-friendly version of Warp 9 will help that out. Stan, >Re: XBOOT. When MultiTos was up and running, I gingerly added XBOOT, taking >care it was first and MT last. MT, somehow, refused to let it load somehow and >I got a quick message about "XBOOT illegal something or other". I removed it >pronto before MT became tempermental again. You're using a Falcon030, right? My friend also has one (a Falcon) and has problems with XBoot also. It appears that TOS 4.02 boots up in ST LOW resolution. I don't thing XBoot is equipped to handle that rez. And it also appears that it does nothing to change to another rez so that it can work. Anyone know of a program that will switch resolutions in the AUTO folder to fix this problem? Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 197 Tue Jul 06, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 05:49 EDT Harvey, A reaction on your MultiTOS concerns. I wish you had red the beta documentation as well as you looked at the beta software ! 1) Although the MMU's Memory Protection MultiTOS can crash. I'm sure that Atari will improve as much as they can and therefore the developer beta versions and the feedback to Atari is very important to improve the product. Anyway Atari can't avoid some of the crashes for compatibility reasons. In the passed we documented some direct acesses to the hardware in supervisor mode and for compatibility this is still there but for real protection we should not let such accesses happen with a lot of nasty results for current installed base of software. I think that we choose the golden way in between and I'm sure that a user will make a selection of stable MultiTOS programs he could work with and programs he should not use under MultiTOS. With the TT and new graphics modes we learned that people made a selection as well so with multiTOS they will mdo the same. Within a cpouple of months a lot of programs will USE MultiTOS and than you have a better situation. 2) LDW Power DOES work under EVERY beta version of MultiTOS but you have to change some memory protection bits in the file header of LDW. One of the offers Atari made for compatiblity with the current installed base of software: (Preliminary) documentation for memory protection in MiNT: Memory protection works on a per-process basis. Unless it uses the special mode bits in Mxalloc, a process' entire text+data+bss and any memory it allocates will be of the same type. There are four types of memory: 1. Private. Only the process itself (and the OS) can use the memory. 2. Global. This memory is totally unprotected. 3. Super. This memory can be accessed by anybody from Super mode. 4. Private/readable. Anybody can read, nobody else can write. By default, all processes load into private memory. TSRs won't work in this kind of memory, but lots of other programs will. Current versions of STeno also must grant wider access, because it passes data to STalker using shared memory; private/readable is adequate for that. Programs that load before MiNT does (i.e. in the AUTO folder) will find themselves in global memory. This is the easiest way to be sure that your TSRs will go on working: RAMdisks, FOLDR100, CACHE080, etc. all work when loaded that way. 3) There are many ways to change priority but you may also change the time slices by a command in you MINT.CNF file. SLICES=n Controls the number of 20ms time slices to give to processes before they will be preempted. The default (2) is usually the best value; a higher value (e.g. 3) will cause CPU intensive tasks to receive more time, while a lower one (e.g. 1) will favor interactive tasks slightly. With 700/800 baud you probable mean 700/800 CPS ? I can run 1200 CPS on my TT in combination with MultiTOS. So with the right adjustments and communication software high speed communucation is possible. Anyway, I'm sure that now that Atari made a stable version of MultiTOS (for me 1.0 IS) they will spend more time on speed improvement and other usefull expansions. Eric said here on GEnie before that AES currently eats to much time and will be improved. If have seen MANY Public Domain programs made for MiNT that can change the programs priority, the beta version you talked about game with such a utility ! Stan, >Please forgive my ignorance, but what is ATARI.BENLUX? And thanks again. Atari Benelux is an Atari subsidairy situated in The Netherlands. benelux stands for Belgium, Netherlands (we say Holland) and Luxembourg which was the origional area for this sub. Currently we are the European Distribution Centre for Europe which means that all computers for Europe come to us and we distribute them to the dealers in each country. I work almost 9 years for Atari now and the last 5 years if've been Support Manager. I'm responsible for our support department here in Benelux as well as for developer support in Benelux and Scandinavia. I will get some european responsibilities shortly (in fact I already have them). Atari Corp used me several times for special projects like Laserprinter etc. So did Alwin Stumpf of Atari Germany. I'm specialised in low level hardware in combination with low level software. So I'm probable one of the few people knowing soft- and hardware together, most people only can do soft- or hardware, I can do it both. Enough about me, back to work and topic now ! Regards, Wilfred P.s. I'm on holiday from July 17 till August 1 and can't answer any questions in that period. ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 198 Tue Jul 06, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 12:06 EDT Chris, >You're using a Falcon030, right? My friend also has one (a Falcon) and has >problems with XBoot also. It appears that TOS 4.02 boots up in ST LOW >resolution. I don't thing XBoot is equipped to handle that rez. And it also >appears that it does nothing to change to another rez so that it can work. > >Anyone know of a program that will switch resolutions in the AUTO folder to >fix this problem? I thought NVRAM1.1 is available here in the download. With that utility you can modify the Falcon030 startup parameters in the NVRAM and select a 640x480 boot screen or 640x400) Regards, Wilfred ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 199 Tue Jul 06, 1993 DMJ [dmj] at 19:08 EDT Windows interprets "VGA" to mean 640x480x16. This is not the problem with the emulator, just the way Windows handles VGA. If you want 640x480x256, according to Windows that's a "Super VGA" resolution, which requires different drivers. -dmj ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 200 Tue Jul 06, 1993 H.WOLFE1 [Harvey] at 23:41 EDT Chris and Wilfred, thank you for all the information. First, my references to download speeds with STalker and MultiTos was a slip of the pen. I did mean 700 or 800 cps (not 700 or 800 baud) versus a normal speed of 1400 cps. Chris, > I have actually only the "Fatal MiNT error/Adjust debug level" error two > or three times. I can't even remember the circumstances under which > they occured. That's good to hear. As I said, I was looking at a beta version, so I couldn't be too sure how the final version would behave. Wilfred, > A reaction on your MultiTOS concerns. I wish you had red the beta > documentation as well as you looked at the beta software ! When I am beta testing a program, I always read the beta documentation. However, in this case, I was being allowed a limited amount of time to look at the program and no time to look at the documentation :-(. > Anyway Atari can't avoid some of the crashes for compatibility reasons. > In the passed we documented some direct acesses to the hardware in > supervisor mode and for compatibility this is still there but for real > protection we should not let such accesses happen with a lot of nasty > results for current installed base of software. Very interesting. I hope that eventually an option will be included to prevent direct accesses to the hardware. > 2) LDW Power DOES work under EVERY beta version of MultiTOS but you have > to change some memory protection bits in the file header of LDW. Is Atari providing supplementary programs with the finished version of MultiTos that will allow the user to change the necessary memory protection bits? > 3) There are many ways to change priority but you may also change the time > slices by a command in you MINT.CNF file. Are any of these ways of changing priority included with the finished version of MultiTos or are they discussed in the documentation? > With 700/800 baud you probable mean 700/800 CPS ? I can run 1200 CPS on > my TT in combination with MultiTOS. So with the right adjustments and > communication software high speed communucation is possible. That's good to hear. Now I'll just keep hoping that MultiTos will eventually show up in Toronto. Thanks again, Harvey Wolfe ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 201 Wed Jul 07, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 02:26 EDT Gribnif (Dan), Like someone else just mentioned, I tried following your instructions to get NeoDesk to load under MultiTOS, and well, it didn't. Putting shell C:\NEODESK3\NEOLOAD.PRG in GEM.CNF and adding EXE to the GEMEXT line didn't seem to do the trick. Do JAR010 and NEOLOAD in the AUTO folder need to have some of the MultiTOS flags changed? Also, I know that with TOS 3.06, it was required to run NEOLOAD in the AUTO folder in order to capture the window attributes, etc. due to a deficiency in AES 3.2. But, is it still required to load it in the AUTO folder with AES 4.0? (A few minutes later...) Well, I just tried that: JAR010 in the AUTO folder minus NEOLOAD, and changes to GEM.CNF as per your instructions. No go. Any ideas? Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 202 Wed Jul 07, 1993 C.CASSADAY [Chris C.] at 02:52 EDT Harvey, >Is Atari providing supplementary programs with the finished version >of MultiTos that will allow the user to change the necessary memory >protection bits? There is a program called CHPROT.APP that comes with MultiTOS that allows you to change the global access of a program. However, it is not described in the MultiTOS documentation. The only other utility *I* have to change those flags is NeoDesk 3.03. There are other programs that will do that, but I don't have them. >Are any of these ways of changing priority included with the >finished version of MultiTos or are they discussed in the >documentation? Negative. Here is a breakdown of the MultiTOS "Quickstart Guide": Introduction to MultiTOS Installing MultiTOS - basically you run INSTALL.PRG on a floppy MultiTOS Configuration - make sure MINT.PRG is last in the AUTO folder The Different Types of Programs - APP, GTP, PRG, TOS, TTP Running Programs with MultiTOS - GEM Programs and MultiTOS - TOS Programs and MultiTOS - Managing Multiple Applications - How Many Programs Can I Run? - Exiting Programs - Poorly-Behaved Programs and MultiTOS MultiTOS CPX Subtle Caveats MultiTOS Updates Thats it. Chris ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 203 Wed Jul 07, 1993 COMPO at 04:14 EDT Stan - DMJ is correct about the color thing. VGA means 640x480x16. More than 16 colors, or resolution higher than 640x480, is referred to as Super VGA (SVGA). We are working on higher resolutions, and more colors, for Falcon Speed. Microsoft behaves like Atari in distributing CDROM drivers - none of them are included in the basic package. Problem getting Windows to see partitions beyond the first four? Are you using the driver ADD_PART.SYS? You may also have to use the DOS command LASTDRIVE= in your config.sys... What's the problem with Screenblaster? If you have it, you might be able to read a bit into my sentence on putting higher resolutions into Falcon Speed... not to drop a hint or anything... Of course, in the meantime, Falcon Speed expects to find regular VGA on the Falcon, and if you are running Screenblaster at, say, 1024x768, Falcon Speed has a little problem. Falcon Speed will try to come up and find it can't. Press the RESET button and it should come up okay. Also, you can install FALSPEED as an accessory - just copy it to C:\ and rename it appropriately. You can then switch to DOS, do what you have to do, and return to TOS (by resetting DOS - CONTROL, ALTERNATE, DELETE - then pressing the ESCAPE key) at exactly the same place you where when you exited to DOS. No resetting of TOS. It's nice if you're in the middle of something in TOS and want to quickly run a DOS or Windows program then come back without losing anything. This technique works under MultiTOS but has problems due to the way MultiTOS loads accessories. Before you get to the desktop MultiTOS will load Falcon Speed and it will automatically run, functionally booting you into DOS. Is there something I missed (re: MultiTOS driver?) Please email me if you have any questions about Screenblaster... Robert ------------ Category 14, Topic 34 Message 204 Wed Jul 07, 1993 ATARI.BENLUX [W. Kilwinger] at 16:39 EDT Harvey, >When I am beta testing a program, I always read the beta documentation. >However, in this case, I was being allowed a limited amount of time to >look at the program and no time to look at the documentation :-(. Well I said that because you discussed a lot of problems that actually don't have to exist if you know how to handle them. I understand that you didn't had time to look at the documentation. >> 2) LDW Power DOES work under EVERY beta version of MultiTOS but you have > >to change some memory protection bits in the file header of LDW. > >Is Atari providing supplementary programs with the finished version of >MultiTos that will allow the user to change the necessary memory protection >bits? The Beta versions came with a program called PRGFLAGS and the final version of MultiTOS comes with a more user friendly program called CHPROT.APP. >Are any of these ways of changing priority included with the finished version >of MultiTos or are they discussed in the documentation? > That functionallity is included however I don't think that the current manual mentions those details. Most of the tricks are part of MiNT and the MiNT documentation has been out and freely available for a long time now. Regards, Wilfred ------------