Wither Natami?

[shoggoth]

SamuraiCrow wrote:
Actually the PC chip makers were about 3 years later since they couldn't write hardware-accelerated drivers until Windows 95 came out.

AFAIK even Windows 3.11 supported accelleration for stuff like window blitting etc. VGA cards we're getting pretty sophisticated by this time, with accelleration for blitting, line drawing, cursor etc etc.

While the A500 was a revolutionary computer, the 1200 was evolutionary. AGA wasn't a big step forward, it was basically a few extra bitplanes and a larger palette. Instead of looking forward, Commodore tried to squeeze a few bucks out of something that was basically designed - what - 7 years earlier.

[shoggoth]

Atheist wrote:
And yes, why chastise me for being selfish and wanting a ONE USER computer/OS? PC is for Personal Computer not Politically Correct, and sharing my toy with all comers.

Multi vs. single user OS has very little to do with memory protection. It's about preventing a crashed application from bringing the whole system down, or to offer some form of protection against hacks, spyware or whatever.

I don't know how you got self modifying code into the equation.

Memory protection can be flexible enough to allow one process to access memory belonging to another process. This is how it works in freemint; where each allocated memory block is tagged with access rights.

Like someone said, it seems like you don't like memory protection just because AOS lacks this functionality.

[shoggoth]

Atheist wrote:

Although, I may have had an older version of TOS that didn't have it yet, and I was using it casually and only for a couple of days.

Can the OS be completely copied over, and a reboot done with then the system disk not being accessed anymore like on Amiga?

TOS doesn't have a ramdisk. Later incarnations of the OS are disk based and does have a ramdisk (/ram/). You can't boot from it though, if that's what you mean.

That said, I wouldn't rule out the possible existence of a bootable RAM-disk, since the system in theory supports it.

[shoggoth]

Atheist wrote:
Yes, I don't like it because it wasn't originally implemented, so I guess it wasn't critical to have.

That was true when applications and operating systems had a small footprint.
Today it's imperative if you want to be sure that your system doesn't crash due to some bug (or other side effect) caused by something outside of your control.

Use your sense of logic, Atheist. They didn't invent this concept because it was stupid, inefficient or useless.

Also, MP slows a system down, and with the pathetic speed we have available to us as it is, we need every cycle we can get.

I disagree. We're talking about a negligible slowdown, hardly noticeable. If you have figures to back your statement up, please give them here. I can benchmark this stuff on a 68060-based machine here if needed, but let's how I don't need to.

ALSO, isn't it true that most SW would need to be recompiled if AOS went MP?

It is. The discussion was not about that however. No offence, but you give people the impression that you have no idea what memory protection and multi-user setups is all about, yet you seem to have a deeply rooted need to bash it. Of course, I may be wrong, in such case please accept my humble apologies.

Doesn't MOS (and possibly AROS? Don't know about AOS4...) offer some degree of memory protection? Can't MOS run applications in different sandboxes depending on their implementation (MP-aware vs. legacy).

Are you a coder by any chance, Atheist?

You got access to all the source code of all the AOS sw out there for that to be done?

Again, we're talking about the *concept* of memory protection, and why it's an essential in a modern context. I'm not bashing AOS in any way, since I've been fascinated by it from day one.

In addition to all of that, who's rewriting AOS3.1 to use MP anyhow?

Dude, that wasn't the point.

[shoggoth]

Atheist wrote:
Those Neanderthals of 1986-1994 weren't concerned of such things I suppose?

Get real, Atheist. I never claimed that these people were Neanderthals. The discussion was about the *concept* of multitasking, something you constantly mix up with AOS bashing (which it's not).

They designed an efficient OS for a CPU which didn't have the mechanisms necessary to achieve memory protection, or they choose not to implement it since it would break other aspects of the OS.

MP doesn't make it impossible for those things to happen anyway.

No, but it's about a zillion times safer than the alternative.

 The need is for programming to BECOME SIMPLER so that less mistakes can happen in the first place.

Ok, so instead of designing crash proof operating systems, we should hope for better applications?

Well, we lived without medicine as well, but that's not something I'd advocate, even though 93% of the world's population doesn't have access to it, or at least way sub par when they do.

lol

Sorry, I do not have stats, nor can I generate them, but we're up against CPUs that are 50 and more times faster than the fastest we can get, so it all counts.

Well, you're looking for bottlenecks in the wrong places.

I bash because it's unnecessary overhead. It's an obstacle. It's clutter. It's bloat. Can we have ONE SIMPLE OS please??? Others are available if this one doesn't meet your needs.

Again, the discussion was about the *concept* of memory protection, not whether or not AOS is a capable alternative (which it sure is).

Multiuser-capabilities doesn't in itself doesn't constitute any overhead, nor does memory protection in practice. This is not bloat, clutter nor obstacles. You just don't like this stuff since their existence would implicate that AOS actually *lacks* something.

Seriously, is that "The Law"?

EVERY SINGLE OS that is buyable by the consumer must have:
1. multiuser logins
2. virtual memory/swap space
3. memory protection

No, I totally agree that there is no reason for all this to be "The Law". There are strengths and weaknesses in every solution, and today people are so focused on unix-ish solutions that they seem to forget that there are other ways to do things as well.

Having said that, the features you list was invented for good reasons, and they don't constitute bloat or performance penalties.

This is way off topic, and it's getting nowhere...