Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!amdahl!drivax!holloway
From: holloway@drivax.UUCP (Bruce Holloway)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: GEMDOS History
Message-ID: <3005@drivax.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 88 17:54:05 GMT
References: <2697@dadla.TEK.COM> <1988Jan24.012514.26587@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: holloway@drivax.UUCP (Bruce Holloway)
Organization: Digital Research, Inc.
Lines: 43

In article <1988Jan24.012514.26587@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> pete@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Peter Santangeli) writes:
>	I believe what Jim has come up against here is the "soon to be as
>famous as the 40 folder limit" bug in the file creation system.
>	It seems that the programmer who wrote the GEMDOS routine to find
>the first free allocation block on a device was as clueless as the guy who
>designed the directory system.
>	This brings up an interesting idea. Gemdos is certainly a usable
>system, but...
>	We have a limited number of folders (static).
>	My hard drive creates new files slower than my floppy.
>	The OS doesn't do any sector level buffering.
>These features remind me painfully of my experiences with TRSDOS on a
>1977 trs-80!

A long, long time ago, a company named Atari wanted a windowing system for
its hot new computer. They came to Digital Research, since unlike some other
companies, we had experience designing operating systems for 680x0 based
computers. And we had Crystal (which became GEM).

And we already had an 'okay' 68000 operating system, CP/M-68K, and we were
(then) working on a multitasking, multiuser version of the same called
"CDOS/68K". But GEM ran only on MS-DOS machines, and sorta depended on that
file structure. Hmmm. So we considered changing GEM...

But then a systems programmer said that _he_ could write a new operating
system in a month that would look just like MS-DOS from a functional
standpoint, and would be great and perfect and peachy-keen. And he did -
pretty much alone. And since Atari was in such a hurry, they took what we
had before all the horrid problems in it cropped up.

And later we fixed all those problems and then forgot about it. I don't think
there's anyone here still working on GEMDOS.

*** NOTE: THESE COMMENTS, ET.AL., ARE IN NO WAY SANCTIONED, CONDONED, OR 
    REPRESENTATIVE OF DIGITAL RESEARCH, INC. THEY MAY EVEN BE WRONG. I
    JUST WANTED TO EXPLAIN WHY AND HOW DRI COULD RELEASE SUCH A SUBSTANDARD
    O/S.
***

- Bruce
-- 
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* Bruce Holloway - Terminal Netnews Addict       uunet!amdahl!drivax!holloway *
* ALBATROSS, ATARI*TROS @ Plink                            ALBATROSS @ Delphi *
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