Amiga Multitask

[desiv]

That means machines such as the C64, MSX, and other 8 bitters can do preemptive multitasking as well

"Can do" and "actually did" are different.
I believe he is saying he is impressed that the Amiga actually did it..

And yes, it was impressive.  The Amiga OS was a very impressive step forward at the time.
No, it wasn't the only multi-tasking OS at the time, but for the market and the functionality, it was really incredible...

Yep, I have and love my A1000...
Great machine..

desiv

[desiv]

It did on the 286 as well.

Not pre-emptively, and very few people actually ran Windows on a 286.  ;-)

I think the preemptive multitasking feature of AmigaOS is mostly overrated. Without memory protection, preemptive multitasking doesn't result in a significantly better end user experience.

It did compared to the other OSs out at the time. IMHO

It's all fun a games until a program goes off into the weeds and then the result is the same with either setup, i.e. the user gets to hit the reset button.

I used a lot of early Windows (predating Windows 3 even) and early MacOS.
There were lots of crashes there too...

Love the Amiga to death but back in the day when I first got my hands on a 386DX/25 w/ 8MiB of RAM and 1MiB trident VGA board, I didn't miss the Amiga one bit. I'd go so far as to say that Windows 3.1 was more sophisticated than classic AmigaOS ever was. It certainly was more stable.

Windows 3.x was an acceptable program launcher, but as with most things, the stability was dependent on the software you were running.  It could be just as unstable or more so than any of the other machines out there..

The Mac was the most stable (well, once they got to System 6), but I remember lots of "Sad Macs."
The more you used them, the more they crashed...

In theory, Windows 3.1 was more stable because it didn't have pre-emptive multitasking.  But I found that my Amiga could be very stable when I ran known stable software and Windows could be very unstable, as the term "cooperative multitasking" implies that the programs cooperate, which they didn't always do...

That said, I've had any and all OSes be both stable and not stable for me depending on what I was doing...

However, pre-emptive multitasking was incredibly useful for me at the time.
It was well worth the occasional crash.  ;-)

desiv

[desiv]

I ran a 386sx25 with OS/2 (2.1 then Warp 3.0) and it was great, didnt start using windows until WinNT 4.0 was released.

I did like OS/2, but they were behind the curve initially.
It didn't even release until 87, and that was with no GUI.
The initial GUI was released in 88, and it took it quite a bit to get to "user friendly" status.
By that time tho, Windows (which wasn't as good kernel wise) had the market all sewn up..

Heck, it didn't get all 32-bit goodness until 2.0 which was released in 92.

OS/2 Warp was awesome tho...  A great OS..  ;-)
And released a year before Win95.  Too bad they couldn't have marketed it better.
There are also people that say that the Windows 3.1 application compatibility helped kill it.  Developers saw no reason to write a native OS/2 version of their app if it would run (mostly) already.

Then again, by 1994, WB 3.x had been out for 2 years.  And from a user perspective (not memory protection or kernels), I preferred WB3.x to OS/2 WARP, which came out 2 years later.

desiv

[desiv]

There were multitasking implementations for the C64

True, and fun stuff..
But we were talking Multitasking OSes here.. ;-)

desiv

[desiv]

You might be interested to know OS/2 lives.
http://www.ecomstation.com

Oh sweet !!!

Awesome!!!
Thanx!

desiv

[desiv]

.... and especially nowdays I think SW code should never be swapped to disk.

Oh, don't go there..
The "swap or not swap" arguments in the Linux kernel threads are epic...
;-)

desiv

[desiv]

Playing games alongside the bbs?. .... Or were you able to play shadow of the beast while running the bbs all in the same Amiga?.

Actually, there were lots of great games that multitasking.
I'm sure there's threads on them to search for..

Yeah, the games that took over the OS were out of the question, but there were still a good selection of games (yes commercial games) that were OS friendly.
Heck, going back to the early days, Mindwalker would multitask, tho I don't think it was an officially OS friendly app.
(You had to use the keys to pop back to WB IIRC, and I don't remember now if it had a quit back to WB.  Been too long..  But I know I would launch that one while using BBSs or whatever WAY back in the day...)

desiv

[desiv]

At that point co-operative multitasking vs pre-emptive multitasking becomes a difficult argument as well.

In theory, yes.
But in practice, the Amiga applications in general behaved fairly well and the "end user" experience was pretty darn good.
Especially compared to the co-operative options at the time.

Both co-operative and non-memory protected pre-emptive multitasking required the apps to behave.
In general they did.
Yes, you had issues from time to time, but you could ID the bad apps pretty easily.

The fact is, all the early OSes crashed from time to time.
Multitasking or not.

Pre-emptive multitasking was a huge performance / functional benefit that, in reality, wasn't any less stable that the other options.
(With the exception of the Mac and multi-finder, which was pretty darn stable, but slow and painful, IMHO)

I used many of the options available at the time, and the Amiga wasn't any less stable, and was (IMHO) much more usable.

desiv

[desiv]

It wasn't more usable because of the pre-emptive multitasking though..

Yes it was...
At least for me and people I knew.

Just being able to have a Word Processor and Terminal program running at the same time.
And then the ability to play a WB friendly (usually the little ones) on top of that....

I could be watching the progress of a ZModem download while typing a doc, without having to task switch...

It was more usable in many ways to me...

desiv