Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!akgua!gatech!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!mit-eddie!jbs From: jbs@mit-eddie.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: AmigaDOS Message-ID: <48@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 00:51:10 EST Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.48 Posted: Tue Feb 4 00:51:10 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 20:41:59 EST References: <1149@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> <2987@ncsu.UUCP> Reply-To: jbs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Jeff Siegal) Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 37 In article <2987@ncsu.UUCP> hand@ncsu.UUCP (Steven Hand) writes: >Dawn Banks writes: > >>What all of this boils down to is that (what I think is) the major failing of >>the Amiga is its resource utilization. Sure a 40 meg hard disk and 8M of >>RAM would certainly mask the problem, however, I'm still not sure why I should >>be finding myself running out of resources so often on a machine with 512K of >>ram and two 880K byte floppies. > >I agree. A few years ago I used a PDP-11/60 with the RSX-11/M OS with 6-7 >users and several background tasks, all on 128K MEMORY. Sure it had a hard >disk and swapped tasks in and out of memory, but it shows what can be done with >a professional OS. It's time for microcomputer OS's to catch up with what >*was* state-of-the-art years ago. > I think it is important to note however, that if you were to try this today, using the most recent version of RSX-11/M+, you will find that: 1) Many additional capibilities and "nicities" have been added. 2) The memory requirements have increased dramatically. 3) The CPU overhead has increased significantly. 4) Those same 6-7 users would find the system resources sufficiently depleted to make using the machine an unpleasant experience. 2-3 users would be much more reasonable. Don't forget also, that the 11/60 dosn't support graphics, windows, etc., etc., etc.... Operating systems involve real trade-offs. Don't fool yourself into believing that XINU, at 4K bytes, is the answer to this most complex problem. Jeff Siegal - MIT EECS