8.0: Timers; Scheduler Sluggishness; Remote Terminal Status Line

[rjb1@gte.com]

We've finally upgraded most of our machines to 8.0.  Now the
inevitable simple questions begin:

1.  Is there any way to get a list of pending timers?  The "old
timers" are still in their queue, but the new ones aren't.  Even with
the quite lucid documentation of the new scheduler (some Symbolics
tech writer deserves a pat on the back), and with an apropos of the
process package, I can't figure out how to examine all the new timers
to decide whether my nightly utilities are already waiting.  I can map
over the processes, but how can I get from a process to its timer
without maintaining my own mapping?

2.  Even before I contaminate the system with my kludgey old polled
processes, the new scheduler seems to get horribly bogged down, just
switching among activities.  I'm in the habit of simultaneously
firing-up a compile-system or two, starting an individually-filtered
mapped-over move in Zmail, and then getting down to work in Zmacs.
This sort of activity always slowed things down a bit, but now it
seems intolerable.  The scheduler seems too "fair" about sharing the
processor among these activities.  Has anyone developed a scheduler
policy (is that what I want?) that greatly favors the "current"
activity?  (Admittedly, I'm running on a '40; perhaps if we upgraded
our hardware....  But that's "a whole nother" story.)

2a.  By the way, has anyone else had problems with process-interrupt
in the scheduler compatibility package?  I haven't yet pinned down
when it works as it did in 7.2 and when it doesn't -- I was probably
abusing it anyway -- but if others have had problems, I'd appreciate
hearing about it.

3.  Has anyone used the remote terminal on 8.0?  Successfully?  It
_tries_ to do some really clever things, but none of my terminal
emulators seem to quite cope -- or else it's doing something wrong.
Perhaps I'm overly optimistic to think that a vt320 supports ANSI
X3.<whatever> -- does anybody have a terminal type on which this
works?  Or, if that's not the problem, has anyone hacked this code
into submission?

(For those who haven't tried it, the remote terminal can now include a
status line on the bottom of the screen, not unlike what you see on
the console, complete with an underlined noting-progress -like
indicator.  But now, when it gets confused, it sticks in underlining
mode and generously decorates the screen, among other, more familiar
sins.)

These details aside, we're fairly impressed with 8.0.  (My favorite
feature is that my programs now have the same bugs on the 3600s as
they did on our MacIvories -- so I can camouflage even my worst
kludges without the #+IVORY flag.)

-- Rich Brandau, GTE Labs