Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!UOTTAWA.BITNET!451061 From: 451061@UOTTAWA.BITNET (Valentin Pepelea) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Unix V7 functionality under (or along with) AmigaDOS? Message-ID: <8903180148.AA23758@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 18 Mar 89 01:17:32 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 50 Randell Jesup in Message-ID: <6276@cbmvax.UUCP> writes: > Lastly, it's easy to say "AmigaDos sucks, we should throw it away and > start over", but in reality that's not a good option. We would throw away > all the work people have done to work under AmigaDos, all old disks would > no longer be useable, old programs wouldn't work, we'd trade our current > annoyances for a brand spanking new set of _bugs_ and annoyances, and destroy > what confidence we have generated in the Amiga. Plus it would take a MAJOR > effort to do that, compared to fixing what problems exist with it. There is though an option which should have been considered a long time ago. There is a multi-user, multi-tasking real-time operating system supporting multi-processors in a mulitude of coupling models (closely, thin-wire, loosely) called Harmony. This operating system was develloped at the NRC (National Research Council) and released about a year or two before the Amiga came out. The source code is readely available, so I am rather suprised that the Amiga people way back then did not port it. Particularly knowing Carl Sassenrath s love of object oriented operating systems. The benefits of adopting this operating system are hardly believable. Can you imagine an Amiga having 5 68020 Zorro boards clustered together to render that ultimate ray-traced picture? Can you imagine an industry-wide adopted operating system taking automatic advantage of the MMU. Harmony is one of the only two real-time operating systems that have achieved industry-wide acceptance. Harmony is used to control combat equipment on the latest frigates and submarine detection on US s beloved nuclear submarines. And considering the Soviets flair for advanced Western technology, do not be surprised if Harmony was in control of the Mig-29. :-) Since the free world counts on Harmony to protect democracy, should we not trust Harmony to run Word Perfect without crashing when memory is too low? I talked with my professor about the possibility of porting Harmony to the Amiga as a fourth year University project, but since Harmony has its own low-level kernel, and thus makes porting Harmony over the Amiga Exec rather unorthodox, I would have ended spending all my time write device driver. I opted for another equally challenging project involving the Amiga. Now couldn t you fellows, who already have the device drivers source code, port this marvellous thing. It would take you only two months. Valentin _________________________________________________________________________ "An operating system without Name: Valentin Pepelea virtual memory is an operating Phone: (613) 233-1821 system without virtue." Bitnet: 451061@uottawa Usenet: Look at the header - Ancient Inca Proverb Planet: Ontario!Canada!Earth