hadeishi@husc7.UUCP (03/09/87)
In <2705@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> Mike Meyer writes: >In article <2719@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes: >>The Exec is the underlying and true core of the Amiga >>OS, and it's wonderful. The DOS was written in England by MetaComCo, and >>sucks rocks. But you can usually code around the DOS, and there is fame and >>fortune to be made in this area. > >Carefull, there - the stuff written in England is what provides all >the nice message passing, library primitives, resource allocation and >etc. that people like so much. I think that the real crud is in the >attempt to mate a BCPL system with a C system. *FLAME ON* First of all, Mike, learn how to spell (or type :-)! Let's get the story straight here, and give credit where credit's due. First of all, the message passing and relocatable library system was designed at Commodore-Amiga and implemented for the most part by Carl Sassenrath in the form of Exec. It is true that AmigaDOG does do some resource allocation, but it is arbitrated through Exec message passing, and relies fundamentally on Exec for its function. Intuition as well was built on Exec, and is written totally in C. The Amiga was NEVER designed to be a BCPL system, not in anybody's wildest dreams. The Amiga was always a C system, through and through, and a wonderful UNIX-like DOS with resource tracking and all that had been designed and was actually up and running on the early Amigas. Normal, real pointers, not these weird BPTRs, pipes, fast directories, etc. Legal hassles and contract disputes with the company that was developing the DOS killed that project at the last minute; Metacomco was hired to fill in in the lurch. I have to admit Tim King and the guys at Metacomco did a h--l of a job converting their rather odd operating system to use Exec message passing, libraries, and so forth, but nonetheless this was one of the tragedies of the Amiga story. This is all straight from the horses' mouth, folks; I am pretty much quoting RJ Mical in his latest talk at the BCS Amiga User's Group meeting last week. Note: RJ hinted that the REAL AmigaDOS, the one that was never finished, may well be implemented in the future. -Mitsu