5 ms·

Interesting observation: Despite it's graphical resemblance to early Mac OS, preemptive multi-tasking actually makes this OS substantially more advanced.

by beloch 11y ago

gress 11y ago
With 30 years of additional development time, you'd expect some advances.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Haha yeah. This and SymbOS are what we might see in an alternative future if all the chip fabs announced: "Ok. We tried to scale. The physics were just impossible. You have to keep using the same hardware and just do more with it." Much more interesting than I thought they'd be, though. :)
  - zantana 11y ago
    Another example is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-J2-VeoH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-J2-VeoH8 a port of wolfenstein 3d I wonder what people will be putting on raspberry pis in 30 years? :)
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      If they ported Wolf3d, that would be awesome. That was just a guy walking around in a Wolf3d room. Lamest vid ever. Is there one of them actually playing the game, sound FX, shooting bad guys, etc? Nonetheless, the 8-bit stuff described here does make one wonder what people will do with raspberry pi's in 30 years. Might be really cool stuff. Two teams give me a hint at where it might go based on prior lightweight work: http://www.menuetos.net/ http://www.menuetos.net/ http://web.syllable.org/Syllable/index.html http://web.syllable.org/Syllable/index.html They both run with limited hardware. Moving things like graphics and audio to dedicated hardware as many SOC's do today will only expand what you can do with minimal processors.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
cmiller1 11y ago
I kinda like the homage to the original Mac OS. It's so faithful you can tell the creators were fans.
- supercoder 11y ago
  I dunno, there's only so many ways you can draw a window isn't there
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Compare to e.g. AmigaOS or Atari's own GEM for the ST/TT line and you'll see what he means. It's much closer to the original MacOS style than the main alternatives of the period.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    It's not just the windows - it's a host of details. I spent many hours staring at that original monochrome Macintosh interface, and the homage here is obvious. - Single menu bar at the top of the screen - System logo menu to the left of the application menus - Clock on the right side of the menu bar - Desktop icons arranged top to bottom on the right - Trash icon in the bottom right - Same medium grey dithered desktop background - Same light grey dithered scroll bar fill - Horizontal stripe pattern in the window title bar - Centered window title text - Identical window zoom icon placed in identical location - Identical file browser window header and column arrangement The system font is different (likely because it is smaller), the scroll arrows are different, and the Mac never had accelerator-key underlines in its menus, but it is very, very clear that the people designing this interface knew the classic Mac OS well and have purposefully based their design on it.
    - flashjazzcat 11y ago
      I had little idea what it would look like when I first started experimenting with window managers, but it was Paul Fisher's initial mock-ups and font designs which steered things towards the Mac "look". I was just happy to have some guidance and help regarding the visuals, since I was too busy with code to design fonts. But it's clear that Paul took a lot of design cues from System 1-7, and this led me to study those same GUIs closely, although I diverged from that when it came to the tab controls on the Profiler (task manager). But yeah: homage it is, and it's also practical, since it looks good at such a low resolution.
Someone 11y ago
But it has fewer pixels to play with and video and audio hardware that has at least ten times the power of that of a 128k Macintosh :-) I would like to see a description of that multi-tasking solution. A simple way to do it that I see is to give each of those 16 processes 16 bytes of stack space, but that would be very tight. You would have to carefully count your stack depth in every subroutine. An alternative is to go for a software stack, but that is slow.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  Like many computers of the time, the Ataris accessed more than 64K of memory by switching banks. Depending on how the banks are selected (size and whether a bank can appear at any address or not, be writable) doing multitasking can be actually easy.
  - Someone 11y ago
    Nice idea, but reading http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix16.php http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix16.php, that doesn't work for swapping the stack. Bank switching switches in a 16k block at the access window starting at $4000.
  - flashjazzcat 11y ago
    As already noted, the Atari's banking window is outside of the stack area. IIRC, André Fachat's Geck/OS optionally makes use of an enhanced MMU which bank switches the stack area, but we have no such mechanism on the Atari. What I came up with is a hybrid stack segmentation/caching approach. Even when copying is required, stack frames are typically very shallow, so the fixed stack isn't quite as burdensome as supposed.
    - rbanffy 11y ago
      Looks interesting. Is the code available somewhere? It certainly sucks it's not possible to map any 16K bank to any 16K segment (shouldn't be too difficult) but I guess nobody was thinking about multitasking and memory protection when those computers were designed.

Interesting observation: Despite it's graphical resemblance to early Mac OS, preemptive multi-tasking actually makes this OS substantially more advanced.

by beloch 11y ago

Interesting observation: Despite it's graphical resemblance to early Mac OS, preemptive multi-tasking actually makes this OS substantially more advanced.

gress 11y ago

With 30 years of additional development time, you'd expect some advances.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Haha yeah. This and SymbOS are what we might see in an alternative future if all the chip fabs announced: "Ok. We tried to scale. The physics were just impossible. You have to keep using the same hardware and just do more with it." Much more interesting than I thought they'd be, though. :)
- zantana 11y ago
  Another example is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-J2-VeoH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3-J2-VeoH8 a port of wolfenstein 3d I wonder what people will be putting on raspberry pis in 30 years? :)
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    If they ported Wolf3d, that would be awesome. That was just a guy walking around in a Wolf3d room. Lamest vid ever. Is there one of them actually playing the game, sound FX, shooting bad guys, etc? Nonetheless, the 8-bit stuff described here does make one wonder what people will do with raspberry pi's in 30 years. Might be really cool stuff. Two teams give me a hint at where it might go based on prior lightweight work: http://www.menuetos.net/ http://www.menuetos.net/ http://web.syllable.org/Syllable/index.html http://web.syllable.org/Syllable/index.html They both run with limited hardware. Moving things like graphics and audio to dedicated hardware as many SOC's do today will only expand what you can do with minimal processors.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

cmiller1 11y ago

I kinda like the homage to the original Mac OS. It's so faithful you can tell the creators were fans.

supercoder 11y ago
I dunno, there's only so many ways you can draw a window isn't there
- vidarh 11y ago
  Compare to e.g. AmigaOS or Atari's own GEM for the ST/TT line and you'll see what he means. It's much closer to the original MacOS style than the main alternatives of the period.
- marssaxman 11y ago
  It's not just the windows - it's a host of details. I spent many hours staring at that original monochrome Macintosh interface, and the homage here is obvious. - Single menu bar at the top of the screen - System logo menu to the left of the application menus - Clock on the right side of the menu bar - Desktop icons arranged top to bottom on the right - Trash icon in the bottom right - Same medium grey dithered desktop background - Same light grey dithered scroll bar fill - Horizontal stripe pattern in the window title bar - Centered window title text - Identical window zoom icon placed in identical location - Identical file browser window header and column arrangement The system font is different (likely because it is smaller), the scroll arrows are different, and the Mac never had accelerator-key underlines in its menus, but it is very, very clear that the people designing this interface knew the classic Mac OS well and have purposefully based their design on it.
  - flashjazzcat 11y ago
    I had little idea what it would look like when I first started experimenting with window managers, but it was Paul Fisher's initial mock-ups and font designs which steered things towards the Mac "look". I was just happy to have some guidance and help regarding the visuals, since I was too busy with code to design fonts. But it's clear that Paul took a lot of design cues from System 1-7, and this led me to study those same GUIs closely, although I diverged from that when it came to the tab controls on the Profiler (task manager). But yeah: homage it is, and it's also practical, since it looks good at such a low resolution.

Someone 11y ago

But it has fewer pixels to play with and video and audio hardware that has at least ten times the power of that of a 128k Macintosh :-) I would like to see a description of that multi-tasking solution. A simple way to do it that I see is to give each of those 16 processes 16 bytes of stack space, but that would be very tight. You would have to carefully count your stack depth in every subroutine. An alternative is to go for a software stack, but that is slow.

rbanffy 11y ago
Like many computers of the time, the Ataris accessed more than 64K of memory by switching banks. Depending on how the banks are selected (size and whether a bank can appear at any address or not, be writable) doing multitasking can be actually easy.
- Someone 11y ago
  Nice idea, but reading http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix16.php http://www.atariarchives.org/mapping/appendix16.php, that doesn't work for swapping the stack. Bank switching switches in a 16k block at the access window starting at $4000.
- flashjazzcat 11y ago
  As already noted, the Atari's banking window is outside of the stack area. IIRC, André Fachat's Geck/OS optionally makes use of an enhanced MMU which bank switches the stack area, but we have no such mechanism on the Atari. What I came up with is a hybrid stack segmentation/caching approach. Even when copying is required, stack frames are typically very shallow, so the fixed stack isn't quite as burdensome as supposed.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    Looks interesting. Is the code available somewhere? It certainly sucks it's not possible to map any 16K bank to any 16K segment (shouldn't be too difficult) but I guess nobody was thinking about multitasking and memory protection when those computers were designed.