Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!jsm
From: jsm@Apple.COM (Jeff Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What is MR-DOS? (An operating system for parallel Mac processing?)
Message-ID: <25280@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 4 Feb 89 02:25:24 GMT
References: <6799@zodiac.UUCP>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 24

In article <6799@zodiac.UUCP> vision@ads.com (Vision-List-Request) writes:
>While at MacWorld in SF, a vendor mentioned something called MR-DOS. 
[asks what is MR-DOS]

MR-DOS stands for Minimally sized Realtime Distributed Operating System.
It's the multitasking OS that is distributed with our MCP (Macintosh
Coprocessor Platform) product.  MCP is a smart NuBus card that comes
configured with a 68000, 512K RAM, all the NuBus logic, and lots of real
estate for third parties to develop their own cards.

Anyway, MR-DOS runs on the MCP card, providing things like task scheduling,
IPC (between tasks on the same card, tasks on different card, and tasks
on a card and the motherboard), memory management, etc.  A subset of its
services (especially IPC) is provided on the motherboard to let applications
etc. communicate to tasks on the card.  It's great for doing things like
communications where the bulk of the code can run on a card while the Mac II
or IIx is freed up to do other things.  This is how MacAPPC (our
implementation of IBM's LU6.2 architecture) works.

I'm probably doing it an injustice with the above brief description, it
has a lot more features.  But you get the idea.

Jeff Miller
Communications Product Development