Re: Multitasking theory question

["AG" <ang@xtra.co.nz>]

"Dale Stanbrough" <dale@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote in message
news:dale-368E8F.17334724062002@its-aw-news.its.rmit.edu.au...
> In article <A8xR8.23$zt.1911@news.xtra.co.nz>, "AG" <ang@xtra.co.nz>
> wrote:
>
> > Not sure about that one. The only Ada compiler on DOS that
> > I ever saw was a [very] old Meridian version. Since it was limited
> > [all the usual disclaimers here] to just a few tasks if I remember
> > correctly, and that DOS probably wasn't *the* problem, well...
> > It looks like it wasn't the question of what does OS support - if
> > you can do 15 tasks you can as wel do 255 at least :)
>
> The Meridian Ada compiler was quite a nice compiler

Yep. And anyways - it was the only one I could get my hands on
at the time.

> (i've since
> thrown out my documentation) but as far as I know there was no
> restriction on the number of tasks (at least not down to the level
> of "a few").

We may be talking different versions perhaps? The one I had, I tried
to implement a simple, model, elevator-control setup for students to
play with and work on basic asynch logic. (The sort of thing when
random events happen and need to be handled on the first-come
last-served :) basis).  Unfortunatly, the system was limited to just 15
concurrent tasks. While still useful, it was not exactly enough.

Don't get me wrong - it was still great for the time but, really, if you
go for the trouble of writing a tasking implementation for DOS (of
all things) why limit it to 15 tasks only? Surely, 255 shouldn't be much
harder? Or 64k?