Questions tagged [operating-system]
Operating systems on retrocomputers generally.
120 questions
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Way to implement multi threading on a MOS 6502 type CPU [closed]
I'm trying to write an OS for the W65C02 CPU but i'm stuck because I have no idea on how to implement concurrency on such old CPU.
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What is the best way to run NextStep?
I want to see what NextStep was all about. I have this idea that NextStep was Steve Jobs' Magnum Opus, and I want to see if it is as good as I think it is. This is how I would approach playing with it,...
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What is the line separator (end of line) character of textfiles of the VMS operating system?
CP/M and MS-DOS had several characteristics are derived from DEC operating systems, such as Control-Z EOF, the coloned device name (drive letter) prefix of file identifiers, 3-character filename ...
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What was and where can I find OS-1 for the Z80?
On page 269 of the June 1980 issue of BYTE there is an advertisement from Electrolabs (in Stamford, CT) for an operating system called OS-1, a "new Unix-like operating system for Z-80."
Did ...
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How plausible is this anecdote about "toggling in" an operating system?
The parody essay Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal (1983) states:
What kind of tools does a Real Programmer use? In theory, a Real Programmer could run his programs by keying them into the front ...
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Why did so many OS names end in "x?" [closed]
This was asked by @ilkkachu in comments, but I've always wondered about it myself.
Unix, Posix, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Minix, Ultrix, Xenix... not to mention Active-X and Xbox.
I know it all began ...
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Rockwell TSO operating system?
I just came across a spec sheet for the little-known Rockwell PPS-8. It states that development is possible on Tymshare, Genie, or "Rockwell TSO". Googling the latter turns up nothing, and I ...
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Do any technical details of Amdahl's Aspen survive?
Aspen was Amdahl's project to build their own clone of IBM's MVS mainframe operating system.
Amdahl cancelled the project at some point in the 1980s (1987?). It was never formally released, but (...
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Why did they call it DISK operating system? [duplicate]
I always thought it was either because the system was capable of supporting a disk file system or because parts of the operating system are swapped to disk.
If DOS means the latter, was there a non-...
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What was the main implementation programming language of old 16-bit Windows versions (Windows 1 - Windows 3.11)?
It seems that MS-DOS was primarily written in assembly even in its last versions.
I understand that new versions of Windows such as the NT-based versions currently in use, and Windows 95 .. ME which ...
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Why were there so many OSes that had the name "DOS" in them?
Why were there so many OSes named "DOS" in them? For example, there was PC-DOS, DR-DOS, MS-DOS, and probably a few others. Couldn't the names of those OSes have something apart from having ...
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First operating system with system calls [closed]
Which first operating system implemented system calls? It should answer to the following characteristic I guess: resident program which exposes low level services (doesn't matter what be it read the ...
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Has any information survived about OS BAMOS for BESM-6, written in DDR?
Recently I learned that there was an operating system for the BESM-6 mainframe developed in DDR: a bibliographical list includes
and quite a few more German-language publications (up to item 105), ...
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What is the full name of IBM CP-67/CMS' DUMPD command?
I am reading the User Guide of CP-67. Under the command DUMPD (page 373), it describes its Purpose as:
The DUMPD command prints the contents of one direct-access record,
specified by a CCHHRR address,...
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What methods were used for password encryption before adoption of DES?
It is well-known that, for quite a while, UNIX passwords were hashed using the DES algorithm (see here).
However, DES was not published until 1975 and not standardized until 1977. What were the multi-...
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Did VMS ever acquire filesystem cross-links?
Both Unix and Windows, quite early, acquired cross-links in their filesystems, such that the filesystems are not trees, but general directed graphs. I'm curious about whether this was an inevitable ...
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Which OS first implemented hibernation?
According to the relevant Wikipedia article, [h]ibernation was first implemented in 1992 and patented by Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston, Texas. This appears to refer specifically to hardware- ...
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First use of an OS in gaming consoles?
Early gaming consoles were quite simple machines (from today's point of view). So simple in fact that often the games were the initial "entry point" for the CPU on boot and the games had to ...
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What was the rationale for the 'INPUT' button on an ICL 1900 console teletype?
ICL 1900 computers were always supplied with 'executive' software tailored to the specific installation. Exec provided simple program load and run facilities. There were no 'lights and switches' on ...
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What's the most recent version of AmigaOS?
Simply as the heading states. What is the most recent version of AmigaOS?
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How was BOS on the Apple III different from SOS?
The original operating system for the Apple III was SOS, a.k.a. "Sophisticated Operating System". Though the Apple III and SOS didn't last very long as the platform was considered a failure, ...
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What is the best way to set up multiple operating systems on a retro PC?
I have an old Pentium II computer, and I would like to set it up as a retro gaming machine, but I would also like to play around with old distributions of Linux, OS/2 and other operating systems.
What ...
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How does Holy C differ from regular C? [closed]
The Temple OS operating system has been credited as one of the most impressive coding achievements ever done by a single coder.
It was done in Assembly and a variant of the C language called Holy C.
I ...
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Looking for any information related to the CDC 1604 Co-Op Monitor
The CDC 1604 Wikipedia page mentions a "Co-Op Monitor (developed by the users' organization)" used as the operating system. Has a contemporary description of its capabilities, e.g. a user ...
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What 386-specific features did Linux use?
There is an interesting discussion about the early days of Linux at https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-path-to-linux that includes some of the exchanges between Torvalds and Tanenbaum. One that caught ...
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Need help restoring the OS of an "AST Premium Exec 386SX/20" laptop
I have an AST Premium Exec 386SX/20 Model 63V laptop minus a floppy drive and hard disk. Otherwise the 1991 vintage machine is fully functional (and in excellent condition, so it's definitely worth ...
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Which was the first OS having both isolated users and programs? [closed]
Multi-user OSes are nothing special. Normally one user cannot access the files of another user. Installed programs are shared. User's are running in a sandbox and they're isolated from other users.
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Why did "protected-mode MS-DOS" never happen?
Software written for MS-DOS used DOS extenders as early as on PC/AT (DOS/16M), and starting from i386-based systems, DOS extenders became really widespread.
I'd think it was pretty obvious at the time ...
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What is the timeline of vertical cursor usage?
As there have been some questions about vertical cursors:
What is the timeline of vertical cursor usage?
This includes anything that is positioned between characters. It doesn't have to be a vertical ...
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System 7.5 install fails (mac IIsi)
I have been restoring a rather iconic (and temperamental!) Mac IIsi.
I have trouble installing System 7.5 on an IBM drive with Apple firmware that OS 7.0 installed just fine on. I am puzzled by the ...
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How many CP/M-86 copies were sold?
Approximately how many CP/M-86 copies or licenses did Digital Research sell across the product life of the operating system? Are there any data or estimates?
I know the success of MS-DOS didn't leave ...
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What is the oldest UNIX available for modern systems?
What is the oldest UNIX(-like) system that can be legally downloaded and run in a VM or emulator on a modern PC running Linux?
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What was the first operating system to be called an "operating system"?
According to Wikipedia, the first operating system was GM-NAA I/O, produced in 1956 by General Motors' Research division for its IBM 704.
According to Merriam-Webster and Etymonline, the term "...
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If I build a new CPU architecture, how would an OS like Linux know how to run it? [closed]
I am trying to build a CPU from scratch (from NOR gates) in an emulator first, then on breadboard. (Inspired by nand2tetris and Ben Eater)
Just trying to understand how things work.
Now, as my CPU ...
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What was the first OS with the type-ahead capability from a dumb terminal?
In a command-line environment of a contemporary Unix-like system, it is possible to "type ahead", that is, for example, to start a process which runs for a while and does not require any ...
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Commodore / Apple II GEOS Document Cross-Platform Compatibility
As I have never used Graphic Environment Operating System (GEOS) on an Apple II (only I on a Commodore 64), I have always wondered were the documents created (from programs such as GeoWrite and ...
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"MOS" - Mini Operating System for PDP-11?
Around 1977 or so, I worked with MOS, a "mini" operating system for the PDP-11. I think it was originally developed at SRI, to support the BBN Packet Radio networking research. It was ...
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How did early Minix represent processes
Minix, as most know, is a "Unix-like" OS originally used for teaching. Early Minix (v1 and, apparently, v2) ran on the 8088/6 series of processors. It could run on the IBM XT.
There have ...
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Which is the first non-assembly (and binary) language to write operating system(s)?
Many programming languages predating C, like FORTRAN, LISP, B, BCPL, were either special purpose or too heavy to write OS. OS were bound to their hardware architecture and died with them. C was used ...
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What did Richard Stallman have against VMS?
Richard Stallman of course was an advocate of free software, and VMS was proprietary, so he would've disapproved of it on that basis alone. (To be clear, I am not discussing here whether he was right ...
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Was server operating systems ever created with a terminal operating system in mind? [closed]
I have always thought that in the case of Microsoft's server operating systems that they were created with the idea that the end-user of those servers would use Windows. I also thought the same for ...
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How does stack size affect functioning of AmigaOS and programs?
A few weeks back I had an issue with a Python script resetting my Amiga on execution. Someone suggested to change stack size in startup-sequence to 4096. I just read that it can be set up to 2500000.
...
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Why I can't use printk() to print string to the screen [closed]
I am trying to add some system interface made by myself to Linux-0.11 and using bochs to debug the interface.But I have found two strange things. Here is my code.
#include <asm/segment.h>
char ...
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How was "GEOS" meant to be pronounced?
GEOS was a hugely popular operating environment for 8-bit Commodore and Apple machines. It was developed and published by Berkeley Softworks, who eventually released a 16-bit version for IBM-...
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Operating system/hardware used for playing a video during a recorded trial that took place in 2013 [closed]
I am watching a 2013 murder trial on YouTube Jodi Arias Trial : Day 23 : 1 Of 3. There is a considerable amount of evidence involving phones and computers.
The following picture briefly appears on-...
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What were the differences between Xenix and Unix?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix by the beginning of the nineties, SCO was selling 32-bit 386 versions of both Xenix and Unix. According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...
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What was the earliest system to explicitly support threading based on shared memory?
The notion of multiple processes has been around a long time, at least since the IBM 360. Multiple processes running at the same time, in separate memory spaces with protection from each other.
(In ...
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What information was present in line printer printout cover/trailer?
Nowadays, in corporate offices where there are typically several office printers per floor, sending a file to a printer does not result in any additional pages identifying the print job, at least by ...
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Ancient browser media photo [closed]
Perhaps 15 years ago, I saw a photo which looked professional showing multiple media types all with labels for either Netscape v4 or the integrated Mozilla suite (which became SeaMonkey). At the very ...
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Why does Linux not show you an asterisk when you enter a character for a password? [closed]
I have enjoyed Linux for about two years now, but I laugh at how hard I failed when I first started my Linux journey. I would try and enter a password and then nothing would happen. I first thought ...
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