MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM MULTIGEM REVIEWED BY Bruce Urbanski of Windsor Atari Users Group Ontario Canada Yes here it is...first in Germany and now in the States..MultiGEM for the Atari ST. Is it really multitasking? The problem becomes how do you define multitasking? I would define it as running two or more different tasks (programs), in such a way that, to the user, it would look like multiple functions were being performed at the same time. For exampe, being online on your favourite BBS and being able to play your favourite game of cards against your favourite computer.. The Apple McIntosh computers come very close to this with something called MultiFinder, which is more like multi-sharing than multitasking. (Only with the release of System 7 has the MacIntosh acheived true multitasking. MultiGEM for the ST does what MultFinder does for the Mac. THE DOG'S TAIL -------------- Look at it this way...either the dog wags the tail or the tail wags the dog. In the first scenario (dog wagging tail), the multi-tasking manager tells each program when to stop and when to run. The manager has complete control over what is going on. In the converse scenario (tail wagging dog), programs tell the manager when they will run and when they will stop. (I have worked for places like this!) In the first scenario, the end result would be, say, three seconds of being online and three seconds of card playing...another three seconds of online time followed by another three seconds of card playing...etc. (This may be an exaggeration, but you get the point don't you??) In the second scenario the card game deals the cards, but you cannot go back online until the game is done dealing..Such is life with MultiGEM and MultiFinder. With both, you load programs into memory and are able to switch back to the desktop or another program, as you wish. On the Mac you click icons in the upper right corner of the screen; with MultiGem you use the desk accessory slots. But I am getting ahead of myself, so I'll start at the beginning... First there was light, then a big bang, the the WAUG AtariFest in Windsor, Ontario (that is in Canada,eh?). One of the booths there, was Rimik Enterprises. They had a light gun hooked up to an STe, so I went to take a few shots. While there I saw the flyer for MultiGEM, and left my deposit for the wonder product. Shipping was expected in two to three weeks. After three weeks, i did not receive my program, but a letter instead. The letter said somthing to the effect of "Sorry, it'll be a couple more weeks". Sigh..though thoughts of vapourware ran through my head, I was impressed that they sent me a letter. Three weeks later, still no program! Then the phone rang.."Sir, we will be shipping your order out tommorrow!" . Anyone who calls me "Sir" is OK by me. Yes they called me unprovoked-and I've been called a lot of things, but never unprovoked . What service, and with the fourth of July weekend coming up too. Ooooohhh, lots of free time I would have to eat, drink and play with my new toy. IT'S IN THE MAIL ---------------- Well, you guessed it. It didn't show up until two weeks later. I was beginning to think my mail carrier was a commie IBM user who would not deliver Atari softwarwe. Seems it was not her fault; the package was mailed a week late. Oh well it was mine now. ONWARD TO THE BASEMENT COMPUTER ROOM !!! ---------------------------------------- MultiGEM comes in a plain white cardboard box with a front and back cover sheet pasted on it-no frills here. Inside was a disk and a small 20 page manual. Well good things come in small packages. Getting Started --------------- Installation was fast and simple..insert the disk into the floppy drive and click on the install program, follow a couple of prompts and you're off. As the manual says you shopuld make a backup copy of your DESKTOP.INF file (or NEWDESK.INF for Mega/STe and TT users). MultiGEM will rewrite and modify this file in order for it to install all its options. The only bad part here is that if you have an extensive desktop setup, you have to re-build and resave it, or directly modify your .INF file with a text editor. That is the only difficulty you may encounter during installation. I guess this would be a good time to mention system requirements. MultiGEM will run from floppy or hard drive on any ST/STe/TT with TOS 1.2 (Mega TOS) or greater. Also at least one meg of memory is pretty much a necessity. I would recommend a hard drive and two meg minimum, if you want to use this software to its full potential. On to customising your system...MultiGEM is intelligent enough to look at your system (RAM, TOS version, drive types), and install itself accordingly. Then you must make a few decisions. MultiGEM takes up all unused accessory slots. Any .ACC files on your bootup partition will take priority over MultiGEM. If you have no accessories, then all six slots will say "MultiGEM slot". You could then load up to six programs into memory and switch between them. You can use any combination of empty slots and .ACC files you wish. This is the first decision you need to make-what you want installed as accessories . I like to use my UIS all the time, so I leave it in the root directory with the .ACC extender. All the other accessories I've renamed to .MUC . MultiGEM has a clever way to keep desk accessory users happy. MultiGEM will run any accessory as a program, providing it has a .MUC extension. You can put all your accessories into a folder, and run them at will. Very nice feature. If you directly modify the DESKTOP.INF file, you can change the default .MUC extension to any of three letters you want (like .ACX). This is explained in the manual. COMPLETING THE CONFIGURATION ---------------------------- Now, there's one more step to do in the configuration process - setting preferences for programs to use with MultiGEM. The configuration dialog is a neat feature and one that solves a number of "problems" which could occur with some programs. For instance, what do you do when you want to multi-task a program like Flash? If you did not already know, Flash loads itself into memory and then uses all remaining memory for its capture buffer. Ooops, no more room to load other programs. The solution here is simple - MultiGEM allows you to limit the amount of memory a program can have. You use the file selector to "insert" a program into the list of programs known to MultiGEM. Then, you set a parameter to have MultiGEM tell the program how much memory it can access. I use the default of one meg for Flash, but it is configurable from the minimum RAM required by the program to the amount of free RAM left in the system. So you might give Flash one meg...Touchup, two...let's see, how about First Word, 500K. On a four meg machine, you could load all these programs and still have 500K free for work space and miscellaneous programs. To make things a little more complicated, you can run other programs from within Flash. How will MultiGEM handle this? Here, you have yet another choice. MultiGEM can unload Flash and load, say, XYZ.TTP into Flash's vacated memory or XYZ.TTP can be run in the free RAM you still have left in the system. It's your choice, and MultiGEM allows you to define which way you want to do it. Either way, when you are done with XYZ.TTP, Flash returns to memory right where you left off. Yes it does work ma!!! So far so good, right? Well, OK, there are a few drawbacks. But before we get to those, you should first understand a little of what MultiGEM is doing. Not being able to rewrite TOS/GEM (as I'm sure a lot of people would like to do), the MultiGEM programmer (Pascal Merle) had to work with TOS/GEM. MultiGEM had to be able to get its hooks into the OS somewhere, to be able to do what it does. In GEM there is a series of AES routines that start with "event_" (such as event_multi,event_button,etc.). These system calls keep track of mouse positions, window resizings, etc. This is how MultiGEM does its dirty work- it uses these event_xxxxx calls to allow switching between programs. The only problem with this is that programas which do not use a window seem to have more problems with MultiGEM than programs that do "do windows". Any program which is window-based, like Pagestream, works perfectly with MultiGEM. Programs which don't use resizeable windows but give acces to drop down menus accessories will also "multitask" with MultiGEM. You can drop into and out of programs that are already loaded into a MultiGEM slot. But once you've run a non-windowing program, you often can't directly access the desktop to run more programs. If a program does not have it's own window or allows access to desk accessories, the program still runs, but does not multi-task as you would like. ARCshell is a good example of this - it's comprised of a dialog box that does not allow you to do anything outside of it's screen. So you can't use ARCshell to start unarcing files, then switch to another program whilst the files are unarced. I mentioned drop down menus a little earlier. Using the desk accessory drop down menu, is one way of switching from place to place. When you run a program, the name of the program is placed into one of the MultiGEM slots. While in a program, clicking on an unused MultiGEM slot puts you back at the desktop - while the program you just left is still running and chugging away. You can then run another program, thus filing another slot. For example you can run Touchup, then go back to the desktop and run 1st Word. Using the desk drop down menu you can jump between applications at will. Or, you can jump to the desktop for a quick disk format. But doing a format from the desktop suspends all multitasking operations...including printing. A printer buffer is highly recommmended for use with MultiGEM, if you have the memory. What about TOS and TTP programs? Well sit right down there partner and let me tell ya 'bout 'em. Clicking on a TOS or TTP program will cause MultiView to run. Multiview opens GEM window then attempts to run the TOS or TTP program inside it. This works fine for many of these programs like ARC.TTP. Viewing text files is also handled in this manner, via a special program supplied with MultiGEM. How MultiGEM Doesn't Quite Work ------------------------------- Say, for instance, you double click ARC.TTP. Instead of the standard argument dialog, you get a full blown GEM window which can be resized to your liking, with ARC.TTP waiting for the rest of the commands you type in, press return, and off it goes. Now for the problem, the cure for which, I am not sure of -- when ARC.TTP is running (or XYZ.TTP) it is difficult to get back to the desktop, or anywhere else for that matter. I think it might be because these programs do event_xxxxx calls very often while processing, or maybe these programs are so CPU intensive that there is not enough speed in the system to get back to another application. I have tried switching with both XYZ.TTP and ARC.TTP. The desktop tries to come up , but the system may draw only one or two windows during the entire process. Would a 68030 board cure this...or a TT. If anyone has access to one of these and uses MultiGEM, I would like to hear what the result is. Anyway the result is the tail wagging the dog. (I ran this at 16 MHz/ MegaSTe, just in case you were wondering.) Some TOS and TTP programs don't seem to want to stay confined to a window. These pesky programs expand to fill the whole screen, so you lose any ability to switch to other programs. How I Was Hooked ---------------- The reason I was so enticed by this product was that I wanted to do Zmodem file transfers and/or Arcing in the background...as of this writing, they have yet to work together. I can't start a Zmodem download and switch to my word processor, for instance. Maybe I'll blow the dust off my Shadow disk to see what it will do...though it does background Ymodem downloads without MultiGEM. FLash acts kind of funny every now and then when using MultiGEM-overlapping windows or a Desktop that scrolls off the sceen when going back online. These are mainly screen redraw problems. As for programs like TouchUp, 1st Word and any non-intensive or fully GEM based program, MultiGEM works like a charm. Can you run a BBS and play Dungeon Master at the same time?...I think not. Infercations ------------ Well I have blabbed long enough. Ina nutshell - does MultiGEM work? Yea, verily!! Does it multi-task everything?? No it doesn't. Hopefully this is just a first step in Multi-tasking. I would expect a few more things to change - like the ability to somehow "force" programs into the background, via a key combination. Also, I expect some programs will be written to take advantage of MultiGEM. I have tested MultiGEM on a couple of different machines and demonstrated the program to a few people. All are impressed, but not all of them have a use for MultiGEM. Look at this one before you buy; MultiGEM is well worth the money, but it may not be for everyone.