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Old 08-03-2012, 02:44 PM   #1
DiskChris
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Default So how did they do it in 880K?
So how did the engineers at commodore manage to fit a multitasking, graphic and sound supporting, realtime operating system that works in less than a megabyte of memory on an 880K diskette? With the release of WB1.3 they managed to do just that. If you ask anyone today if they can fit a multiastking graphical operating system in 880K and have it use less than a meg of memory they would say it is impossible. Now, granted Workbench doesn't have to have drivers for every device on the planet, but it still amazes me what they were able to do.
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Old 08-03-2012, 02:55 PM   #2
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Well, 1 floppy, plus the Kickstart.

Some more of the power of the Amiga.
The Kickstart ROM held many of the functions..
Still, the Kickstart was only 256k, and that WB floppy wasn't quite full...
In fact, I have a "Kickwork" floppy for my Amiga 1000 that has kickstart and workbench 1.3 on it..
(Although I had to remove some Workbench Utilities)

The power of Intuition!! ;-)

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Old 08-03-2012, 03:20 PM   #3
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Actually, nearly everything fits into Kickstart's 256 KB...
For a somewhat functional system you don't need more than a few dozen KB off the floppy.
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Old 08-03-2012, 03:32 PM   #4
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
You could do better with less actually, but that appears to be a dying art
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Old 08-03-2012, 04:58 PM   #5
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
You can get a floppy image of Menuet OS.
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Old 08-03-2012, 05:09 PM   #6
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob View Post
You can get a floppy image of Menuet OS.
Yep, there was (is?) a QNX floppy with a full GUI for x86 around too that was fun.

It's just not appreciated much anymore, because most people have GOBS of RAM and CPU and disk space....

But it's still really nice when it's done right..

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Old 08-03-2012, 05:18 PM   #7
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
It's simple: you just have to not be a lazy ass, know what you're doing, and never settle for "eh, whatever, we'll just up the requirements another 2x."

Unfortunately, nobody does that anymore.
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Old 08-03-2012, 05:20 PM   #8
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
@ DiskChris

welcome aboard

now who was it again that said "you will never need more than 640kb"
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Old 08-03-2012, 05:29 PM   #9
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by desiv View Post
Yep, there was (is?) a QNX floppy with a full GUI for x86 around too that was fun.

It's just not appreciated much anymore, because most people have GOBS of RAM and CPU and disk space....

But it's still really nice when it's done right..

desiv
The QNX floppy had a full web browser and TCP/IP stack as well.
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Old 08-03-2012, 05:40 PM   #10
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mongo View Post
The QNX floppy had a full web browser and TCP/IP stack as well.
I was going to post the same thing, but for some reason the site was down ...

There was suppose to be a collaboration between Amiga and QNX for the nextgen OS, but we all know how this turned out.
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Old 08-03-2012, 06:08 PM   #11
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Hell, virtualization and hypervisors were created in the 1960s when computers didn't have "memory" as we understand it - they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
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Old 08-03-2012, 06:44 PM   #12
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by B00tDisk View Post
they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
And each word is a number of bits, therefore a byte is just an eight bit word (although no one says that anymore)
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Old 08-03-2012, 06:46 PM   #13
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Quote:
Originally Posted by B00tDisk View Post
Hell, virtualization and hypervisors were created in the 1960s when computers didn't have "memory" as we understand it - they stored "words" rather than bytes and kilobytes.
Indeed. Hell, even Windows NT was openly based on VMS, which dates from 1975 and ran in 40MB disk space and 6MB RAM. Most of the advances in desktop operating systems since the mid-'80s have been putting progressively simpler interfaces on top of mainframe tech from the '60s-'70s...
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Old 08-03-2012, 07:10 PM   #14
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Well to be fair, today's OSs have Hi Color graphics and icons, etc and alot more capability. But yes AmigaDOS 1.3 was very impressive for 1985-1987.
Just look at MS-DOS/Windows 2.0 and MacOS 6.

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Last edited by TjLaZer; 08-03-2012 at 07:18 PM..
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Old 08-03-2012, 07:22 PM   #15
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Default Re: So how did they do it in 880K?
Off topic but check this site out!

chiptune.com
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