vision@deimos.ads.com (Vision-List-Request) (02/04/89)
While at MacWorld in SF, a vendor mentioned something called MR-DOS. They were selling a 68020 coprocessor board, and they said that Apple will be providing this MR-DOS which will operate as the software interface to the board. They said MR-DOS will be coming out very soon. Could someone (preferably at Apple with knowledge of MR-DOS), please describe what it is, what it does, and when it is currently expected to hit the streets? thanks, phil...
jsm@Apple.COM (Jeff Miller) (02/04/89)
In article <6799@zodiac.UUCP> vision@ads.com (Vision-List-Request) writes: >While at MacWorld in SF, a vendor mentioned something called MR-DOS. [asks what is MR-DOS] MR-DOS stands for Minimally sized Realtime Distributed Operating System. It's the multitasking OS that is distributed with our MCP (Macintosh Coprocessor Platform) product. MCP is a smart NuBus card that comes configured with a 68000, 512K RAM, all the NuBus logic, and lots of real estate for third parties to develop their own cards. Anyway, MR-DOS runs on the MCP card, providing things like task scheduling, IPC (between tasks on the same card, tasks on different card, and tasks on a card and the motherboard), memory management, etc. A subset of its services (especially IPC) is provided on the motherboard to let applications etc. communicate to tasks on the card. It's great for doing things like communications where the bulk of the code can run on a card while the Mac II or IIx is freed up to do other things. This is how MacAPPC (our implementation of IBM's LU6.2 architecture) works. I'm probably doing it an injustice with the above brief description, it has a lot more features. But you get the idea. Jeff Miller Communications Product Development
pollock@usfvax2.EDU (Wayne Pollock) (02/07/89)
"MR-DOS"? "MACAPPC"? Are you kidding? I could invent better names
than these in my sleep! What are you gonna do when MicroSoft sues you
for trademark infrigement (i.e., MS-DOS)? Or when customers of MACAPP
think they're buying version C? Come on! You can do better than this!
Wayne Pollock (The MAD Scientist) pollock@usfvax2.usf.edu
Usenet: ...!{uflorida, codas}!usfvax2!pollock
GEnie: W.POLLOCK