🚀 go-pugleaf

>Za...@sanity.com wrote:
>>
>> >>On 10 Mar 97 04:14:06 -0600, ������ <zi...@gulf.net> wrote:
>> >>>all three at the same time if I want....and I have had the capability of
>> >>>true pre- emptive multitasking for over ten years, much unlike your PC.
>> >>>
>>
>> >funny, my PC has had pre-emptive multi-tasking since 1984, don't know
>> >what's wrong with zippos!
>>
>> Funny, It appears Brian that you do not have any earthly idea as to what
>> you are talking about. The Amiga has if fact been doing true pre-emptive
>> multitasking since 1895 and your PC has NOT! The PC only became capabile of
>> true pre-emptive multitasking when OS/2 came out. Previous to that it was
>> COOPRERATIVE multitasking and THERE IS quite a difference. Sorry but you
>> are dead wrong! The Amiga can do this with as little as 256k ram and Amiga
>> OS is very small in size compared to the bloated OS's on the PC.

>Actually, regarding preemptive multitasking on PC's, Brian is correct.
>There were many OS's for PC's in that time frame which DID implement
>full preemptive multitasking.  For starters:

>  XENIX (UNIX-like, ran on 8086 and above, not sure of 8088)
>  MP/M (a multitasking CP/M sold by Gary Kildall's company)
>  various hard real-time microcontroller OS's (precursors to QNX, RTOS,
>etc
>   such as Intel RMX)

>A more interesting study is how _tiny_ the ram requirements are of some
>of the embedded controller OS's for 80x86.  Hard real-time preemptive
>systems, at that.

>Further, even though the scheduling was time-slice tasking, system
>add-ons
>such as Desqview _did_ preemptively execute multiple DOS virtual
>machines
>on 286 systems and above.  This was not _cooperative_, this was simple
>time-slice preemption.  Primitive, but preemptive.

>--
>John Wiederhirn (DSD, Graphics Kernel MTS)        jwi...@engr.sgi.com

No acutally John in fact he is dead wrong. As is evidenced by his statement
about Dos and Windows. He was NOT talking about some obscure OS which very few
people have even heard of much less used!

And if you hadn't convienently snipped the part where he stated "Does he think
his computer runs Dos and Windows automagically? Then this whole thing takes on
an entirely different context.

He was NOT talking about these OS's that you mention that never made it, and it
is obvious to anyone who read the post...that he is in fact "clueless" as to
what true pre-emptive multitasking is..and the OS's you mention are INDEED
primative..very different from the Amigas OS! John Devorak seems to think the
same thing when he said last October in PC Magazine...and he did not dig out any
obscure OS's for his statements either in reference to the Amiga OS calling it
one of the *great* OS' of the last 20 years....

However, I did find your information on the OS's interesting! :) But this is not
what he was talking about.......

PC Magazine: Inside Track (10/22/96)

PC
Magazine -- October 22, 1996

Inside Track

John C. Dvorak


The Jinxed Machine Rises Once Again, Maybe, Dept.: The hapless Amiga, a machine
a decade ahead of its time (there's a lesson in there somewhere) was sold by a
bankrupt Commodore to Germany's Escom AG two years back. Users hoped the sale
would signal a revival, but Escom AG couldn't do anything with it and went
bankrupt in July 1995, leaving the Amiga in shambles. Now the machine's design
has been sold to VIScorp, a Chicago-based set-top-box maker. Meanwhile, as a
result of the bankruptcy, numerous companies are claiming rights to the machine.

No matter. VIScorp plans to revive the machine. There is some talk about porting
the Amiga's OS code to the PowerPC, which would probably be a great idea, since
the Amiga OS remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years,
incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capability the likes of
which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT. The biggest
difference is that the Amiga OS could operate fully and multitask in as little
as 256K of address space. Even today, the OS is only about 1MB in size.And to
this day, there is very little a memory-hogging, CD-ROM-loading OS can do that
the Amiga can't. Tight code--there's nothing like it.

I've had an Amiga for maybe a decade. It's the single most reliable piece of
equipment I've ever owned. It's amazing! You can easily understand why so many
fanatics are out there wondering why they are alone in their love of the thing.
The Amiga continues to inspire a vibrant--albeit cultlike--community, not unlike
that which you have with Linux, the Unix clone. Expect to see VIScorp release a
68060 upgrade board for the machine. Amazing how high-quality machinery never
dies an easy death.

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