Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 14:05:25 GMT
From: acc AT asterix DOT inescn DOT pt (Antonio Costa)
To: dj AT athena DOT ctron DOT com
Subject: GO32 multitasking
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

In reply to DJ reply:

>>We are thinking of changing GO32 to support multitasking (preemptive).
>
>Why not just use DESQview/X?  It has all that already.

Right, but one has to buy it. Also, we are not interested in all that
complexity, just a simple environment with multitasking.

>>* How does VPCI match with multitasking?
>It doesn't - that's up to the application.
>>* Where should we implement the multitasking kernel:
>>  above VPCI or under?
>You have no choice - it has to be on the go32 side.

Ok.

>>* Is the 387 emulator reentrant? Will we have problems there?
>No, it's not.  You'd have to implement copy-on-write for that portion
>of the virtual memory space.

Right. That means more difficulties...

>>* The BIOS calls are not reentrant. If we use VPCI will it solve this 
>>  problem? And about DOS?
>VCPI has nothing to do with it.  When inside a BIOS call, you can't
>multitask.  I suggest special-casing certain BIOS calls, like get-key
>and get-line, and some read calls, to multitask while waiting for
>keyboard input.

Ok, that was our idea. So we'll have to do it.

Thanks,
Antonio.