Andrew Farnsworth wrote: > Yep, remember, this was back in the era when multitasking was a > mainframe word and was unheard of on anything smaller than room sized. > Even then, multitasking was very limited and most commercial mainframes > still required a human (or sub-human) operator to manage the workload. > Personal Computers didn't get multitasking until the Macintosh came out > and even then it was cooperative multitasking (software based) rather > than preemptive multitasking (hardware based) and your infinite loop > really would bring the machine to it's knees. > > Andy > You know that some of us worked on those mainframes, Andy. Even then we wondered just _what_ that multitasking was really doing. As far as I could tell, the programmers were the only ones doing multitasking as we had to have eight or ten things to work on at a time while waiting for program compiles to cycle through the queue.
In 1979, our company bought a Honeywell minicomputer that was about the size of your average office desk. It had a laminate top on the top to carry that metaphor - it was a _desk_, not a desktop, computer. A killer system it was, too: 128 K of memory (I hesitate to say RAM) and a 10 MB disk split between a 5MB fixed platter and a 5MB removeable cartridge. We had two terminals and two printers connected to the system. It had a real operating system that would have supported more users sessions if there was I/O to drive. Not real fast but got the job done. Howard --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
