With all the recent hype surrounding Google's Chrome, it's refreshing to see someone taking a few steps back and looking at the bigger picture. Superlatives were abound about Chrome (I personally really like it), but some people really took it overboard - take TechCrunch for instance: "Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows." Seeing my nationality, I know a tulip mania when I see one. So does Ted Dziuba.
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Member since:2008-03-25
I'm not familiar with the C64, but did every application talk directly to all the hardware it used? If so, then there would be a lot of redundancy between applications, since they would be doing the same things. If not, then there was an OS,even if it wasn't visible to the end user...
Member since:2007-10-26
Member since:2005-07-06
The C64, and every other computer have operating systems.. In fact, repeat after me OPERATING SYSTEM....
The system, whereby the machine operates...
In fact, if you would have searched you would have found this..
KERNAL
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This article is about Commodore's 8-bit OS software. Kernal is also a common misspelling of kernel.
The KERNAL is Commodore's name for the ROM-resident operating system core in its 8-bit home computers; from the original PET of 1977, via the extended, but strongly related, versions used in its successors; the VIC-20, Commodore 64, Plus/4, C16, and C128. The Commodore 8-bit machines' KERNAL consisted of the low-level, close-to-the-hardware, OS routines (in contrast to the BASIC interpreter routines, also located in ROM), and was user callable via a jump table whose central (oldest) part, for reasons of backwards compatibility, remained largely identical throughout the whole 8-bit series. The KERNAL ROM occupies the last 8 KiB of the 8-bit CPU's 64 KiB address space ($E000-$FFFF).
The KERNAL was initially written for the Commodore PET by John Feagans, who introduced the idea of separating the BASIC routines from the operating system. It was further developed by several people, notably Robert Russell added many of the features for the VIC-20 and the C64.
I think you are confusing an Operating System and a GUI, as in Geos.
Member since:2007-10-26
The system, whereby the machine operates...
Don't be so dense it is possible to make a computer that has no OS. What came first the computer or the OS?
No I mentioned GEOS not because it can draw to the screen but because it has one thing that many early OS's had the ability to switch running programs. An OS is the layer between Applications and the hardware not an application and the hardware. If you only have one application running ever you don't need an OS. What you may need is a set of libraries for similar applications but those libraries are not OS's.
Member since:
2007-10-26
The C64 was a machine without an OS, very common for 8bit microcomputers. It could only run one application at a time. But there where competitors that did have an OS like the Mac. The Mac could kinda run more than one program at a time (ok you could do the same with the C64 but cut n paste and reboot and load "*",8,1 would be a pain). So they introduced GEOS to the C64 and lo and behold it could run more than one app at a time.
Now imagine that you have a souped up C64 that runs google chrome. Only one application at a time. But chrome can run applications inside of itself. So by applying chrome to your souped up C64 you have a Operating System. Anyone who doesn't understand how you can get a computer to run a single application without an OS is thick. Sure that does not mean chrome is an OS, but it does mean that it can be one.