Mail Archives: opendos/2001/10/29/13:00:59
In article <3BDC7853 DOT 2020700 AT drdos DOT org> you write:
> What is Minuet? It has multitasking?
As I remember it, Minuet is a multi-client internet program similar to
Nettamer in concept and while the word is that it multitasks, when I
tried it I wasn't convinced. It's news and mail collection is a bit
restricted and it needs a packet driver, but the real problem is that it
stopped development some years ago. The one thing I really liked about
it was it's FTP client although, as I recall it, it couldn't resume
interrupted transfers. It's sad that it appears to have died without any
source being released.
> btw: I heard from nobody that s/he has run a DOS system with
> multitasking using internet in more than one task.
>
> Please tell us more :-)
In my opinion the KA9Q family (KA9Q, JNOS, YAN et al) have far better
multitasking and there are several versions still in active development,
but KA9Qs are only access agents so mail/news needs to be read and
replied to offline. While they can use a packet driver, they can also
have internal PPP/SLIP which is somewhat more efficient. They can have a
whole slew of specialist clients and servers compiled in, but the normal
collection is NNTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP, Telnet, maybe HTTP and loads of
stats and diagnostics. FTP and HTTP can resume and NNTP has some pretty
serious killfiling options. The real problem, if you don't roll your
own, is finding a compile which suits your needs - they tend to come in
three styles: client-centric, server-centric and all-rounders, in a
choice of several different interfaces.
In general, KA9Q is (fortunately) a mouse-free zone, but one flavour,
Textwin, has multiple overlapping text windows which can be controlled
with a mouse.
For what it's worth, I use YAN several times a day. It's quick and
(generally :) flawless although I seldom have more than five sessions
active at any one time.
The difference between the two programs is largely philosophical -
Minuet, like Nettamer, is far more of a "user-friendly " thing and so is
a lot easier to set up and run, while being comparatively limited.
KA9Qs, on the other hand, are your basic anorak software - essentially
techie and as such they work like a dream when properly set up, but are
a bit of a pig to get to grips with (the configuration options are
bewildering at first sight).
These programs are applications. While they may multitask their built-in
clients/servers (KA9Qs can also multitask a DOS shell, but KA9Q is still
present so memory is very restricted), they aren't intended to act as
multitaskers for anything else. I'm not sure if Minuet has any special
CPU/memory requirements, but most KA9Qs don't.
If you want general DOS multitasking, it's Desqview or, possibly, DRDOS
you need to look at. In both cases, if you need to multitask internet
activity, you'll also need to look out a packet multiplexor or run
Minuet or a KA9Q ! This can end up seriously complicated :)
For what it's worth, I don't think multitasking is that big a deal
unless you really need it and in internet terms you only really need it
if you're paying for your time by the second or you're running your own
server machine. If you're really into this stuff, you're already running
Linux or some such and none of the above holds the slightest interest so
how come you got this far ?
Alex.
--
____________________________ _______________________________
( Alex Venn ) ( Success has many fathers, )
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