🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DC8s5E.Bv1@ecf.toronto.edu>,
PISCHKE  DAVID <pischke@ecf.toronto.edu> wrote:
>In article <3v0ue9$9ls@sashimi.wwa.com>, G <blackbob@sashimi.wwa.com> wrote:
>>This, of course, is false.  The Amiga multitasked just fine using
>>just floppies.  The original implementation of UNIX also had one
>>megabyte of disk (compare to Macintosh with two floppies).  Minix
>>is a complete UN*X clone which runs on XT's with two 360k floppies
>>(one can even recompiled the kernel in this system).  Etc.
>
>Early Macintoshes had 128K of RAM and one 400K floppy drive.  The Amiga, when
>it first came out, have 256K of RAM and one 880K floppy.
>
>Are you telling me you can fit a pre-emptive multitasking operating system
>into 128K of RAM and 400K of disk space, and still have room left for 
>an application, its support files and documents?  I find that hard to
>believe!

   Why?   If you've got the hardware, all it takes is some sensible
kernel coding to protect critical areas, the code to swap processes
in and out, and, hopefully, some code to handle semaphores so multiple 
people can chatter at the same thing at the same time.  Of course you
have to have the hardware, and in 1984 the price of a good mmu would
have made the Mac a whole lot more expensive.

                 ____
   david parsons \bi/ Though it would have worked better to replace
                  \/                  multifinder with a pmt system.