From: millsm@nextnet.csus.edu (Matthew Mills)
Subject: Re: 7.1 vs. OS/2 and Windows NT
Organization: California State University Sacramento
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 20:58:55 GMT

In article <EenHBA_00YV_M8K6ly@andrew.cmu.edu> cj00+@andrew.cmu.edu (Carl B Jabido) writes:
>> * Support for the localization of Sorting order, Data and Time formats,
>>   currency, measurement, calenders and numbers (Not, Not)
>
>Umm, what's this?  A control panel?  We have them.  They're all in Settings.

 Properly written applications take advantage of several String, Date,
 and Numerical routines which can be "Localized" (setup for a
 particular culture and country) allowing them to be changed without
 modification to the program itself.
 [I think]

>> * Automatic slot conflict resolution (NuBus and Slot Manager) (Not, Not)
>>   ( MCA helps, but it isn't automatic )
>
>In the PC world, hardware and operating systems are basically
>independent of each other.  By this I mean that in the PC world, if you
>make an OS with hardware dependence, then you risk not supporting the
>thousands Taiwanese clones.  
>BTW, tell me if I'm wrong, not all Macs come with NuBUS right?
>Another point, I haven't really ever seen serious hardware conflicts. 
>That's with an Ethernet card, and a Soundblaster, and all the extra
>stuff that should be on the motherboard but isn't (drive controller,
>video, actually, if you want to be technical, Ethernet too).

I beleive that the original poster was eluding to the definition of IO
space on an IBM PC and clones.  On a standard ISA based machine
expansion cards must be mapped to various location to allow reading
and writing to on-the-card RAM.  This is usually done with DIP
switches or programmable registers on the card.  No standard was
implement for these cards and thus the user (mostly novices) were
given the responsibility of changing these locations to prevent any
collisions.  This is not an easy thing for non-computer types to deal
with.  The EISA specification does have detection routines to see if a
card has been added or removed from the system and goes through a
re-configuration process to modify C-RAM on the system which means no
more dip switches (yeah!), but the user still must select the i/o
ranges from a set of menus.  MicroChannel, I think, uses something
similar to EISA. In any case, most programs that use the IO devices
must still be told the new locations in order to use them especially
the old devices. Newer devices usually have a set of ID bytes that can
be scanned for.
The Macintosh Slot Manager scans the slots for any cards and checks
their on-board roms.  The SM keeps track of their locations and any
program that uses the device can ask the slot manager for the info it
needs.  The slot manager also keeps track of any devices on the system
board (ie: internal video).  The user does not deal with IO locations
nor memory conflicts, nor re-configuration of any programs.  Sweet!

[ talking about OS2 ]
>Multithreaded operation.  This too has probably been on the net before,
>but it's important too.  Example:  while in a word processor, I can
>select print, and before the word processor is done sending the file to
>the spooler, I'm back at my cursor and I can edit it or whatever.  There
>are more examples of where threading is useful, but I'm tired because
>it's now 1:30. . .
I do recall seeing an example of threading on the Mac.  It required a
thread INIT (so its not built in) but it did work.  It had a couple of
example programs that used the unix alarm feature, and more.  I think
I saw it on ftp.apple.com so I am pretty sure it will be included in a
new system in the near future, I hope! (Apple, are you listening?)

>Last one, (Just to get your blood temp up to about 10000000000 degrees!)
>NO COMMAND LINE!!!
Does MPW shell, or Frontier count?

>
>Why do I want one?  How do you set a path for running programs in a
>folder 5 or 6 deep?  You have to dbl-click, dbl-click, etc. . .  Just
>set a path and type in the command, and you're running it.
It seems to me that every drive you have mounted is on the "path" for
a macintosh.  If I need to open a file I can double-click it and the
creator program will start-up (or come to the foreground) and open it
for me, and the program can be anywhere.
If you need to run a program only, an alias will do. Drop it under
apple items and its only one click-drag away.

>Carl Jabido
>cj00@andrew.cmu.edu
>carl@captainjack.ws.cc.cmu.edu

Matthew
-- 
| Matthew Mills                       | To do is to be - Socrates 
| Technical Lab Assistant (CSUS)      | To be is to do - Plato
| mail-> millsm@csus.edu              | Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy