OSs: The Bitch Session

Jehnny - I don't know about anyone else... (seems I may have missed a lot of the discussion too :( ).... but the only 'problem' I had with the original was that it was slightly lacking in some detail (at least IMHO).

For example whilst Gore touched on P&P in more depth in the original version he omitted to do similar with ActiveX, the registry etc etc. I only suggested that he could have done more with the original... as Gore will tell you though he did plan on including those bits in a follow up tut... which he obviously has done and which you have posted on his behalf... the inclusion of which makes it a much better tut (again IMHO).

If I was giving Gore a hard time (which I didn't think I was to be honest... <moment of self introspection>... Gore if you think I was giving you a hard time please PM me for offering of olive branch...) it's only because I'd hate to see him let himself down with a tut than could have been (and now has been) made better.

so Gore ya big softie where are ya... I wanna give you some greenies :D

I don't know if anyone else had any probs....??

Z

was and still is full of misinformation
btw why he go run to you, cant handle it on his own?
****ing pussy

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btw why he go run to you, cant handle it on his own?

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mmm... wouldn't have put it quite like that myself... but the sentiment had crossed my mind too.......

What happened to Gore's post in the first place? Did he delete it?

I assume Gore vaporised it being as we're all giving him a hard time about it...... but I ain't been around much for a few days so I don't know..... maybe RiOtEr bounced it into orbit off his avatars bouncing jubblies.....


Z

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Originally posted here by RiOtEr
was and still is full of misinformation
btw why he go run to you, cant handle it on his own?
****ing pussy

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If there's tons of stuff wrong with it, I just want you tell me what exactly is wrong. As far as I know, if you can show where stuff is messed up, Gore would have no problem editing it out if you could prove he was wrong in some way, and exchange it for better more accurate information. As for myself, though, I couldn't find anything wrong with it when I read, but OSs aren't really my arena, so..

And he didn't run to me. He told me he posted his tute but deleted it, and I asked why he deleted it and he said you guys were giving him a hard time about it. So I asked him to read it, and told him I'd post it myself so you guys could, instead, give me a hard time and we could just figure out what the big problem is with the tutorial.

It was said to me that everyone was being really rude, mean, uncooperative, etc, and in my opinoin, that's just screwed up. When I spend tons of time on something (be it writing a tute, diong some art, programming, anything) I really don't appreciate people saying my work sucks because they dont' like me, and not actually giving any constructive criticism. I realize you don't like gore, rioter, but honestly it's no reason to disrespect him on public forums, by downing his work or by calling him a "****ing pussy."

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Command line interface requires you to actually learn to use a damned PC right.

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Wouldn't this be a "pro" instead of a "con"? ;)

Nice tut.

:)

I saw the original, I have seen plenty of Gore's other posts and I have scanned this version of the tut.... (the history doesn't really interest me.......), and I have two points to make.

1. Historically Gore has been one of the quickest and often the most vociferous critics of others. Often, in these cases, he offers little or nothing to the conversation but simply castigates the author. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising to find he is so thin skinned when similar is done to him. To me, it speaks volumes to his character.

2. He tried.... Whether he was successful or not, whether it was useful to the uber leet or not he tried. If you have a problem with a tut then post "corrections"/questions etc and make a discussion out of it. The result would be a lot more useful to others than a bunch of geeks whining at each other about the quality.

Lastly, ('cos I just thought about it.....), the History of Operating Systems is a book, it's not something that you can cover properly in a "quick and dirty" tutorial on AO.... So, for Gore, topic selection is something you should probably consider before you spend your valuable time "scribbling for the masses" ;). For the rest: When you see a topic that clearly can only be a synopsis let's not "smell the blood in the water" and attack like sharks - because sharks are careful about what they attack - it isn't a blind rage like the media like to portray it - sit back and giggle if you please, but either add to the conversation or STFU might be a good decision.... ;)

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If you have a problem with a tut then post "corrections"/questions etc and make a discussion out of it.

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speaking for myself, I thought that was what I had done and I have acknowledged in my first post that I think this version is much better than the original... which makes me curious as to what else was said since I never saw the rest of the comments (things move fast round here sometimes)

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When you see a topic that clearly can only be a synopsis let's not "smell the blood in the water" and attack like sharks -

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couldn't agree with you more... which again speaking for myself is why in the original thread I did suggest things to Gore that I think he could have mentioned in more depth... turns out they were things he was going to include anyway.... and as I say the inclusion of them above makes it a better tutorial.

I realise the subject is a vast one - certainly too much for a tutorial which is why I ain't attacking... more.... prodding.

Z

PS

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He tried...

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Precisely the other reason why I only suggested and tried to add something worthwhile to the original thread... the fact that someone tried is very important in my books.

My original response to Gore's post was that it was a bit thin on history and lacking technical depth. I wasn't complaining about the attempt. It was a good attempt. Covering the topic of OSs in this limited space is a challenge for anyone.

However, by cooperation, we can all add to the effort.

I submit:

DOS:
The first "DOS" (disk operating system) for desktop computers was CP/M (not Apple-DOS), developed in the mid-70's by Gary Kildall (Digital Research). Gary's model was the old PDP operating systems. This was the model on which the first version of the 8086/8088 DOS was built at Seattle Computer (from which Gates and crew bought). This CP/M was also the OS that Gates and crew wrote the Basic Interpreter for (published as GW-Basic).

The original IBM PC actually came with two operating systems. PC-DOS and CP/M 86. The first IBM PC also only had 64KB (one bank filled) RAM. It was up to the user to add additional RAM as needed.

PC-DOS was dog slow and clunky in 64KB RAM, but there were some applications for it (Lotus 123 was one). CP/M 86 ran just fine, but there were no apps for it. The bean counters, or course, won. CP/M 86 died out and was dropped by IBM.

GUI:

All the real work on GUI's started in Xerox-PARC, from which Apple, Microsoft, IBM (you young-uns probably don't remember the IBM GUI--thank whoever's in charge for that), HP (Amiga and Atari, too) built their various graphical interfaces. Until Win98, though, Apple was the only major company offering a fully integrated GUI that wasn't just a shell over the real OS.

Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 95 were not operating systems. They were operating environments. They rode on the memory management and API of DOS (the operating system). The environment and operating system did not become integrated in the x86 platform until Windows 98 (I think this may have been pointed out elsewhere on AO).

Plug-n-Play

P-n-P was not actually an operating system function, but a hardware standard for which Microsoft wrote supporting drivers and tools in Win9x. The hardware standard was developed by Microsoft partners as an approach to adding hardware to a system without having to go through the kind of misery and suffering required when adding hardware to IBM PS/2 MicroChannel systems. Hardware standards for processor and motherboards were being brought out by a number of vendors to vie for the 32-bit market. IBM's MicroChannel was a very good idea, but it was IBM'ed to death. The EISA was what prevailed and what P-n-P was designed to work in, originally.

There were also a number of "bus-mastering" models that appeared to help deal with the information handled by graphic, sound and other peripheral cards on systems. PCI won out as the fastest and simplest general purpose interface to replace the old 16-bit and 8-bit ISA slots. Later, AGP came along to handle graphics. These all had an impact on what the OS could work with and how well it could function--and how easy it was to add peripherals to a system.

640KB:

The 640KB RAM limitation was never really there. Most systems came with just 640KB at one point, and had no additional memory sockets available for adding more. It wasn't until some clone makers added additional banks of RAM sockets that we were seeing 768KB and as much as 1MB on PC/XT and AT systems. There were memory cards that could be plugged into 16-bit ISA slots that would expand memory. But that was an expensive and not very good solution. The cost of an upgrade from 640KB to 1MB (at the time) was about $500. There were two methods back at about version 3.3 of MS/PC-DOS (1987/1988) for addressing upper or higher memory. One was extended memory and one was expanded memory. I get confused as to which worked which way, now, but the one that allowed full access to high memory was the one that one out. Before Win3.0 was released, I was tweaking DOS to move drivers and portions of DOS into upper memory blocks, or high memory. I cut my teeth on understanding how memory worked and how to get the most out of it working in the 64kB environment of CP/M.

Multi-tasking:

There was a race to true (cooperative) multi-tasking at about the time Win95 came out. Apple was trying hard to do it, but came up short and had to live with pre-emptive multi-tasking for a few more iterations of its OS, largely due to limitations of the Motorola processors. Microsoft, on the other hand, had no such limitation with the Intel processors and got a huge boost with the 486s.

Win95:

Windows 95 did support internet connectivity out of the box. It included support for TCP/IP (granted, you had to know that the support was not loaded by default, but had to be added). I networked a campus with Win3.11 and Win95.