#CAOS
29 messages in this thread
Carl also wrote a series of books on Amiga programming called "Guru's
Guide to the Commodore Amiga". I only have the first book in the series,
Meditation #1 – Interrupts, but sure would like to get the rest if I could
find them. Here is an excerpt from the book about the author:
"In 1983 Carl Sassenrath left Hewlett Packard to join Amiga Computer, Inc.
as the Manager of Operating Systems. At HP he was involved in the design
of operating systems, graphical user interfaces, and object-oriented
languages. During his years there he concluded that it was possible to
develop a small, quick multitasking operating system that would be a
balance of power and simplicity.
At Amiga, Carl was the principle designer and implementer of the
Multitasking Executive (Exec). As such, he was responsible for the
low-level software architecture of the Amiga.
In 1985 after losing the battle to prevent the adoption of the current
AmigaDOS, Carl resigned from his position as Manager of Operating Systems.
He did not wish to become associated with AmigaDOS in any way. Instead, he
became Manager of Advanced Execution Environments, where he pushed for the
use of object-oriented operating systems and multi-processor
architectures.
Frustrated, Carl left Amiga in late 1985 to develop his ideas on
object-oriented systems and languages. In the fall of 1986 he joined
Apple's Advanced Technology Group with the hope of creating future
operating system technologies.
In early 1988 Carl retired from the Silicon Valley lifestyle and returned
home to the peaceful redwood forests of Northern California. He now heads
a small company dedicated to the development of high technology software."
So now you know Carl's important contribution to the Amiga OS and a little
bit about his history. It is interesting to note his rejection of
AmigaDOS. Instead, he wanted to see CAOS (Commodore Amiga Operating
System) implemented, but instead CBM farmed it out to Metacomco and we got
AmigaDOS in return.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
PMFJIH, but isn't CAOS a very bad name for an operating system. Though with
the flaws in the original AmigaDOS, it may have fit. 😀
pMfji,
I believe the Caos idea was picked up by some guy named Gates?
>>I believe the Caos idea was picked up by some guy named Gates?
Naw, it was Maxwell Smart! <vbg>
Jim
Jaywal Productions, Inc.
Hehe, yep CAOS might not be the best name for a DOS. Actually, it would
probably fit better in the PC world than anywhere else <g>.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
He only wrote the first one (the rest never happened).
>returned home to the peaceful redwood forests
He owns a freaking mountain.
dale@iam.com http://www.iam.com
Intangible Assets Manufacturing
Pardon me non-native English reader, but what's a freaking mountain? Is that a
kind of amusement park?
Merci 😉
Fred.
Frederic Botton from Paris, France
fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
No, it's a *very* big pile of dirt with trees and a house on it.
dale@iam.com http://www.iam.com
Intangible Assets Manufacturing
Fred,
Il s'agit d'un euphemisme pour un autre mot fort utilise en anglais, mais pas
admissible sur Compuserve. <g>
Pete
Yes, a euphemism that has been popular on a few hard-boiled TV shows where the
other word (sounds-like "freaking") would not be permitted. Most commonly, by
Dennis Franz, formerly on "Hill Street Blues" and now on "NYPD Blue".
–Jim
A freaking mountain is a very large hill where many hippies have dumped large
doses of LSD-25 while running away from the local authorities …
DJ
Flying high on Autopilot and French Dark Roast,
From Queens, where the ice cream truck plays Helter Skelter …
Thank you for the resume, John.
I just can add he was also responsible for the CDXL technology he based on his
Exec work. That was, by that time (Milano's DevCon) the only machine able to
have some 1/4 screen 256K colors videos without additional hardware.
Fred. (who got introduced to Carl by Ben Phister…)
Frederic Botton from Paris, France
fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
Do you keep in touch with Ben now that he is in Paris?
dale@iam.com http://www.iam.com
Intangible Assets Manufacturing
What exactly was C(h)aos? What differences, basically, would there have been?
Mr. Zombie
Actually Paul, I'm not really sure what CAOS whould have or could have
been. Carl mentioned in his book that there was a 35 page specification
for CAOS but probably nobody outside CBM has seen it. I believe Andy
Finkel wrote an article about it in one of the online magazines, possibly
the one thats on Genie. If I can dig up some more information about CAOS,
I'll post it in the library.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
Amiga Transactor, April 1988, Volume 1, Issue 1:
"In the beginning was CAOS", by Andy Finkel:
".. CAOS did memory management to a greater extent thatn AmigaDOS, and would
have had resource tracking..
"..interesting areas to look at: multiprocessing, the File System, and
Memory management…
"Multiprocessing: a CAOS Process structure is built on top of an Exec Task
structure. CAOS was intended to keep a linked list containing blocks of
resources used by the process – file control blocks, I/O blocks, message ports,
libraries, memory usage, shared data, overlays and so on (This part of CAOS
lagged behind the rest, which may explain why we don't have a semblance of it
now)…
"Memory Management: COAS bsically provided well-managed regions of memory.
. COAS would manage the memory within a sub-region, allocating sections for
code, data, program stack and so on .. If a sub-region became fragmented, CAOS
would attempt to perform compaction and garbage collection… Believe it or
not, the AmigaDOS Seglist gives almost as much functionality.
"File System: CAOS supported four types of files: ordinary files, directory
files, image files, and special files. Ordinary files are typed as well…
"CAOS allows file names of up to 30 characters. Both absolute and relative
paths are supported. CAOS supported both hard and soft links…
"CAOS maintained useful file information, like a descritption field (up to
255 characters), creation time, update time, link count, permissions
(R/W/Ex/Locked), type (directory, printable, non-printable, etc.), userID,
size, and blocks.
"Limits: max file size is 1 megabyte, max name size is 30 characters, max
path size is 255 characters, max number of files about 440 on a floppy, max
open files 16 per process, max length of a softlink text substitution would
have been same length as a path."
End quote. There's too much detail for me to transcribe it all.
–Jim
> "Multiprocessing: a CAOS Process structure is built on top of an Exec >Task
structure. CAOS was intended to keep a linked list containing blocks >of
resources used by the process – file control blocks, I/O blocks, message
>ports, libraries, memory usage, shared data, overlays and so on (This part >of
CAOS lagged behind the rest, which may explain why we don't have a >semblance
of it now)…
I have wondered why on unix systems, if a program crashes one simple shell
command will kill the program, its window etc. but on my Amiga I have to use
ARTM to kill the task, the window, perhaps the ARexx port etc. all separately.
._ _ _ INTERNET: mshea@math.arizona.edu
| | |ichael _>hea COMPUSERVE: 76665,3360
Thanks for the rundown on CAOS Jim. It looks like CAOS would have made it
a lot easier to implement some of the things that the Amiga is missing
like Memory protection. I have several of the Amiga Transactors but don't
have volume 1, issue 1 so that's why I never saw the actual article.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
John,
The reason CBM dumped CAOS and went to Metacomco for TripOS is because CAOS was
at least a year away and CBM needed a filesystem NOW as the 64 was dying
rapidly — they needed to get the machine to market.
-sja
Your point regarding time to market is valid, but note that the C64 family
wasn't dying at all. It was just dying in the US. They still sold 650,000
C64s worldwide in fiscal 1992 (and they had only sold "over 12 million" by
then)!
dale@iam.com http://www.iam.com
Intangible Assets Manufacturing
Steve,
so that's the same reason why PC users have had to put up with Intel's 8088 CPU
(Common Processing Urror) and Microsofts's QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating
System), later re-christened MS-DOS – because IBM had a deadline, no CPU and no
operating system. The only operating system for a 16bit CPU was QDOS (actually
a rip-off of CPM) which was available only for Intel's CPU. Motorola had their
CPU ready but no OS yet, so IBM had to go for the Intel/MS-DOS combination…
// Christian "ELP" Busse
\X/ near Frankfurt, Germany
Christian,
That's not true…there were other available OS's for Intel CPUs at the
time IBM made their decision…in particular, CP/M was available.
There were also other CPU's available…with an OS available to go with
them, mainly from Motorola.
Don
Don-
Didn't Motorola delay by a few weeks or something, in order to fix a bug, while
Intel just shipped their chip with a bug?
Mr. Zombie
Paul,
that I don't know.
Don
Don,
IBM needed (wanted) a 16bit OS for their new PC and they needed it FAST because
of internal deadlines to finish the thing. A 16bit OS for the Motorola wasn't
finished yet, and Digital Research's boss was flying his Cessna when the IBM
people arrived so they went on to Bill Gates where they originally only wanted
to buy a BASIC for the new machine. Bill knew of a developer just across the
lake who had ported DR's CP/M to 16bit and offered this to the IBM people. He
then made a deal with the developer and sold this as MS-DOS to IBM which was
the beginning… Source: Robert X. Cringeley's 'Accidental Empires' – get it!
CHeers,
// Christian "ELP" Busse
\X/ near Frankfurt, Germany
Christian,
The IBM engineers choose the Intel CPU because they had just finished a project
using the Intel 8085 so they were familiar with interfacing to the Intel IO
chips. They thought they had to get to market fast so they didn't want to take
the extra time to learn about designing with a Motorola or Zilog CPU, either of
which would have been a better CPU IMHO.
Also the original IBM PC's came with 3 OS's including MossyDOS so PC users only
have themselves to blame for MSDOS.
//
\X/ Amiga lives? Gary Bonnstetter
Thanks for the synopsis on Carl. Was CAOS an object oriented operating system
like NextStep? If so, it just serves as another example of how CBM screwed up.
From some things I have seen and read, I think object orientation is going to
very very important in the future of computing. With the kind of asset Carl
appears to be, the Amiga might have been the leader in this field had CBM had
any vision.
To be fair though, I think Object Oriented systems might have been somewhat
contraversial back in 85.
._ _ _ INTERNET: mshea@math.arizona.edu
| | |ichael _>hea COMPUSERVE: 76665,3360
John,
If you ever find a source for the rest of the series in the "Guru's Guide to
the Commodore Amiga" let me know — I want them as well <grin>! I picked up
"Meditation #1 – Interrupts" a few moons ago and have never seen a sequel.
Maybe there never were any 🙁
EdV
Steve left me a message a few days ago mentioning that Meditation #1 was
the only Guru guide published. I guess Carl wanted to get back to nature
more than publishing books <g>. Too bad actually, I'm sure it would have
been an excellent series of books on the Amiga internals.
// John (Warp 4040 & Emplant Quadra 840)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net