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From: ddb@ns.network.com (David Dyer-Bennet)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Why unix doesn't catch on
Keywords: multitasking
Message-ID: <1292@ns.network.com>
Date: 18 Apr 89 20:29:05 GMT
References: <1922@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <101000047@hpcvlx.HP.COM> <199@isctsse.UUCP> <4937@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> <2890@rti.UUCP>
Reply-To: ddb@ns.UUCP (David Dyer-Bennet)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Terrabit Software
Lines: 21

In article <2890@rti.UUCP> bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) writes:
:In article <4937@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:
:> In article <199@isctsse.UUCP> pajerek@isctsse.UUCP (Donald Pajerek) writes:
:> Rediculous!   There have been commercial multitasking/multiuer systems
:> around for years on machines less powerful.  PDP-8s had TSE which supported
:> 16 users on a machine certainly less than 1/10th the speed.
:
:The old multitasking operating systems for things like the PDP-8
:and so forth required application programs which cooperated with the
:operating system.

Ummm, this turns out not to be the case.  TSS-8 on a PDP-8I had hardware
protection against the timeshared tasks doing anything that would damage
the rest of the system.  Possibly that was through a required hardware
add-on to the basic 8/I, I wasn't involved in ordering and configuration
management for that system.
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, ddb@terrabit.fidonet.org, or ddb@ns.network.com
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