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Author Topic: So how did they do it in 880K?  (Read 4559 times)

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Offline DiskChrisTopic starter

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So how did they do it in 880K?
« on: August 03, 2012, 09:44:30 PM »
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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Offline desiv

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2012, 09:55:22 PM »
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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Offline Zac67

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2012, 10:20:59 PM »
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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Offline Thorham

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2012, 10:32:57 PM »
You could do better with less actually, but that appears to be a dying art :(
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Offline Rob

Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2012, 11:58:34 PM »
You can get a floppy image of Menuet OS.
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Offline desiv

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2012, 12:09:18 AM »
Quote from: Rob;702118
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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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #6 on: August 04, 2012, 12:18:18 AM »
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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Offline klx300r

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #7 on: August 04, 2012, 12:20:26 AM »
@ DiskChris

welcome aboard :pint:

now who was it again that said "you will never need more than 640kb" ;)
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Offline mongo

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #8 on: August 04, 2012, 12:29:07 AM »
Quote from: desiv;702121
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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Offline amiman99

Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #9 on: August 04, 2012, 12:40:32 AM »
Quote from: mongo;702124
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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Offline B00tDisk

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #10 on: August 04, 2012, 01:08:13 AM »
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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Offline Thorham

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #11 on: August 04, 2012, 01:44:42 AM »
Quote from: B00tDisk;702128
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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Offline commodorejohn

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Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #12 on: August 04, 2012, 01:46:43 AM »
Quote from: B00tDisk;702128
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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Offline TjLaZer

Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #13 on: August 04, 2012, 02:10:22 AM »
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.  ;)

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« Last Edit: August 04, 2012, 02:18:11 AM by TjLaZer »
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Offline TjLaZer

Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
« Reply #14 on: August 04, 2012, 02:22:17 AM »
Off topic but check this site out!

chiptune.com
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