Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: DiskChris on August 03, 2012, 09:44:30 PM
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So how did the engineers at commodore manage to fit a multitasking, graphic and sound supporting, realtime operating system that works in less than a megabyte of memory on an 880K diskette? With the release of WB1.3 they managed to do just that. If you ask anyone today if they can fit a multiastking graphical operating system in 880K and have it use less than a meg of memory they would say it is impossible. Now, granted Workbench doesn't have to have drivers for every device on the planet, but it still amazes me what they were able to do.
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Well, 1 floppy, plus the Kickstart.
Some more of the power of the Amiga.
The Kickstart ROM held many of the functions..
Still, the Kickstart was only 256k, and that WB floppy wasn't quite full...
In fact, I have a "Kickwork" floppy for my Amiga 1000 that has kickstart and workbench 1.3 on it..
(Although I had to remove some Workbench Utilities)
The power of Intuition!! ;-)
desiv
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Actually, nearly everything fits into Kickstart's 256 KB...
For a somewhat functional system you don't need more than a few dozen KB off the floppy.
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You could do better with less actually, but that appears to be a dying art :(
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You can get a floppy image of Menuet OS.
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You can get a floppy image of Menuet OS.
Yep, there was (is?) a QNX floppy with a full GUI for x86 around too that was fun.
It's just not appreciated much anymore, because most people have GOBS of RAM and CPU and disk space....
But it's still really nice when it's done right..
desiv
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It's simple: you just have to not be a lazy ass, know what you're doing, and never settle for "eh, whatever, we'll just up the requirements another 2x."
Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore.
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@ DiskChris
welcome aboard :pint:
now who was it again that said "you will never need more than 640kb" ;)
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Yep, there was (is?) a QNX floppy with a full GUI for x86 around too that was fun.
It's just not appreciated much anymore, because most people have GOBS of RAM and CPU and disk space....
But it's still really nice when it's done right..
desiv
The QNX floppy had a full web browser and TCP/IP stack as well.
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The QNX floppy had a full web browser and TCP/IP stack as well.
I was going to post the same thing, but for some reason the site was down :sealed: ...
There was suppose to be a collaboration between Amiga and QNX for the nextgen OS, but we all know how this turned out.
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Hell, virtualization and hypervisors were created in the 1960s when computers didn't have "memory" as we understand it - they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
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they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
And each word is a number of bits, therefore a byte is just an eight bit word (although no one says that anymore) ;)
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Hell, virtualization and hypervisors were created in the 1960s when computers didn't have "memory" as we understand it - they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
Indeed. Hell, even Windows NT was openly based on VMS, which dates from 1975 and ran in 40MB disk space and 6MB RAM. Most of the advances in desktop operating systems since the mid-'80s have been putting progressively simpler interfaces on top of mainframe tech from the '60s-'70s...
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Well to be fair, today's OSs have Hi Color graphics and icons, etc and alot more capability. But yes AmigaDOS 1.3 was very impressive for 1985-1987.
Just look at MS-DOS/Windows 2.0 and MacOS 6. ;)
Amiga DOS 1.3
(http://uber-leet.com/images/os/os1.3.png)
Microshaft Windows 2.0
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Windows_2.0.png)
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Off topic but check this site out!
chiptune.com
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But yes AmigaDOS 1.3 was very impressive for 1985-1987.
Not to me, I only see tremendous room for improvement on the same specs.
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What makes a good OS is a language that keep code tight and still allow you to express your computations without hinderence. The programmer has to some vision as to what is needed, and what should be left out. And the courage to think through the system as a whole both for present needs, and future possibilities.
Selecting a tool that is "easy to work with" with no thought on code produced from it. Nor thinking through "do I need this?" or "what is the best way to do this?".. "are ALL possibilities covered?" is a recipe for bloat and "mystery errors and magical fixes".
I think C is neat combined with assembler for those really tight sections. Then it's a question of deciding the bare minimum while still have a framework for stable and tight expansion. So your OS doesn't expect all storage devices to be of the floppy type or can't handle more than X bytes of RAM etc. Or gets horrible slow from expansion due to bad data structure design and evaluation.
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It's simple: you just have to not be a lazy ass, know what you're doing, and never settle for "eh, whatever, we'll just up the requirements another 2x."
Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore.
This should be drilled into computer science students every single day of their academic careers.
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Not to me, I only see tremendous room for improvement on the same specs.
That's kind of sad...
I was very impressed, but instead of just "seeing room for improvement," I saw potential based on what I'd already seen...
desiv
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This should be drilled into computer science students every single day of their academic careers.
Actually, the problem isn't the developers but the marketing people. With the developers putting up too little resistance.
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Not to me, I only see tremendous room for improvement on the same specs.
Possibly - for getting the job done the same way at that point in time. But if you keep a modular, open system in mind as a platform for constant evolution, to my mind it's been a pretty nifty feat.
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Not to me, I only see tremendous room for improvement on the same specs.
Yes I'm sure you prefer Microsoft's Windows 2.0. Look at that screen shot again.