10 Jun
1998
10 Jun
'98
3:33 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Sounds neat. I guess I've got to try and find one. Are there any
here on the rebellious side of the Atlantic? (I know _nothing_ of
these machines beyond your messages, if I saw them advertised the
references went into brain cells that have been foully murdered).
--
Ward Griffiths
They say that politics makes strange bedfellows.
Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else.
Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_
Especially since the TRS-80 Model 16, with the
Xenix OS partly done
by Microsoft, multitasked (and multiusered) quite nicely even with
only 256K of RAM. Not to mention the Color Computer running OS-9 in
64K.
Or the early versions of PDP11 unix which ran in a 28kW machine, I think.
Or, indeed, Tripos, which certainly runs in a 28kW PDP11.
One of the smallest multitasking systems I've seen was the I/O processor
on the PERQ 2's. It was a Z80 with 4K ROM and 16K RAM, but said ROM
contained essentially a cooperatively multitasking kernel. Some tasks
were in ROM, others were loaded into RAM. OK, so the user never realised
what was going on, but that doesn't alter the fact that it was there :-)