25 Aug
2012
25 Aug
'12
2:22 a.m.
At 11:14 AM 8/24/2012, Allison wrote:
David Gesswein wrote:
OS/8 on the DEC PDP-8 was most definitely single-task, single-user.
There were other PDP-8 operating systems such as TSS-8 (EDUsystem-50)
which were multi-task/multi-user, as well as time-sharing systems that
were multitasking.
You may be thinking about the fact that OS/8 could be run as a
background job as part of RTS-8.
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:21:57PM -0400, Allison
wrote:
The biggest difference was OS/8 was multi-task/multi-user. Unlike many when CP/M came about in the mid 70s
I'd experience
with OS/8 and TOPS-10 and wished that CP/M was more.
I haven't used CP/M. What was the significant items that were better
about OS/8 than CP/M? I had thought they were similar in capability
(and even shared some command names).
It also existed and was more powerful than CP/M years
earlier on
a CPU (PDP-8) that was more primitive.
I don't know how anyone could call OS/8 more powerful than CP/M. OS/8
was a very, very simple system.
OS/8 does just a few things: it allows you to read/write files, has a
command decoder, and a keyboard monitor (command line). It has no
services for critical things like console terminal input/output, has a
rudimentary file system, and basically doesn't do much.
Now, if you replace the "OS/8" above with "RT-11" I'd be in
agreement.
-Rick