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by sedan_baklazhan 1459 days ago
The article is unfair. "After all, these new directions brought the PC almost up to the same spec that other computers had been enjoying ten years ago." - this is simply not true. Apple, main competitor of PC's, still had years and years ahead to gain preemptive multitasking. Windows NT and even 95 were significantly ahead of competition.
1 comments
throwaway236324 1459 days ago
The article refers to Amiga, which came out in 1985 with a multi tasking OS (Workbench). That was a popular computer, at least in Europe. It was not as popular as IBM PCs, but it did show that it was possible at a reasonable price.
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tialaramex 1459 days ago
Although the Amiga Workbench has pre-emptive multi-tasking it not only has but encourages use of a backdoor to switch off the pre-emption. As a result you don't gain as much as you might hope over systems with co-operative multi-tasking like Windows 3.x - Apps A, B and C may be getting along just fine, but if App D is selfish enough they're all screwed anyway. Together with lack of memory protection (for hardware cost reasons initially) this means Amigans don't end up making as much use of the multi tasking as you'd think - if I run A, B, C and D but then the system crashes, who do I blame?

That backdoor is still there and causing problems in 2022. You can buy a 64-bit multi-core "modern" Amiga but it is still running an OS with a stop-the-world backdoor to switch off pre-emption, and so it only ends up using a single core in 32-bit mode. Or you could put Linux on it.

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feintruled 1459 days ago
It's not acceptable for 2022, it was bloody amazing in 1985. Obviously you pick the apps you run, so if you stuck to well behaving apps (and there were plenty) the multitasking was great. Crashes were a fact of life to be sure - one was wise to save often.
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sedan_baklazhan 1459 days ago
I didn't realize it was preemptive from the early ages.
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