Re: (g)olden days

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

"Steve (yfnpa)" <GTEpost@I-AGREE-TO-PAYthe-firm.com> wrote:

>Recently I got into a debate over whether early personal computers (like the
>Apple ][) had multi-tasking programs.  I said they did although I guessed
>back in the late 70s it would have been done manually in a stand alone game
>.  I couldn't think of an example, though (anyone know of an example?).

OS9 for the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer (COCO) was an OS
for an 8-bit computer that featured preemtive multitasking...

Andy Facet (spelling?) wrote a preemtive multitasking OS for the
Commodore 64 computer.

Although no early 8-bit Apple II had multitasking, the 16-bit
Apple IIGS (released in 1986) has both cooperative and preemtive
mutitasking ability with the right OS or OS extensions (now free).

At around the same time (1985-1986), the Commodore Amiga
was released and it too had/has a preemtive mutitasking OS.

Mutitasking OS tend to be loosely based on UNIX...

>This got me interested learning about the origins of mutli-tasking and
>multi-threading.  It seems so easy to implement it nowadays.  I'd like to
>learn about how/when/where it all started.  Does anyone have any suggestions
>of where to find some good information / FAQs on this ?

I am pretty sure it originated from UNIX in the sixties or
seventies.