Your first operating system?

draceena

That Crazy Amazon Chick!
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Sorry to hear that your condition is getting worse, Cat. I really hope that you can get it sorted out, it almost sounds like your medications are interacting with each other. Not prying or anything and you don't have to answer but have you seen other doctors about your issues? Again, you don't have to reply and know that I'm hoping the best for you.
 

fab

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My early experiences began in 1968. What a time for computer geeks. They were a new breed and hadn't even been named yet.

Computers did not come with operating systems then. It was the early days of 'mini-computers.' We had to write our own operating systems. No such software item was available otherwise.

In those days operating systems for small machines, versus mainframes, were really task scheduling systems. My first operating system was an 'rtos', real-time operating system, running on a 16 bit Digital Equipment Systems mini-computer with 32,000 bytes of memory. The equivalent processor clock rate was well under 1 MHz. I believe it was in the range of 250 KHz. Today we are pushing 10,000 times faster speeds, plus we now have multiple cores; a concept unheard of in those days.

Two of us got together and wrote our own operating system, debugged it and got it up and running in about 4 months. It was about 6,000 bytes in size. We provided multi-threading, multi-tasking, prioritized and nested interrupt handling and direct memory access for input and output. Along the way we had to develop a debugger so we could make better headway. Virtually no software came with a computer beyond an assembly language assembler and loader. We had to write our own drivers for almost all of our devices, except paper tape readers. Printers were slow to be introduced. We had to write our own drivers for our first printers. There were no monitors, no disks, no ethernets. Magnetic tape readers were used sometimes but were a luxury, not a common commodity. Magnetic tapes were about an inch wide on 12-18" spools. Early magnetic tape readers were about 6 feet tall and cost about the same as a couple or a few engineer's annual salary.

Operating systems did not imply any applications, unlike today's OS with all kinds of included applications and middleware and such. Device drivers and handlers were not part of operating systems. There was no 'protocol' stack. Code developement tools were hard to come by above assembly language level code. We often even worked directly in binary machine language; i.e., 1's and 0's, hand assembled code manually inserted into memory one computer word at a time via front panel switches or read in from binary punched on paper tape. For manual input there would be one switch for each bit position in a computer 'word' of 8, 16, 24 bits ... yes there were 24 bit machines. There would be another set of switches for the address. One would set up the data switches to point to a memory address and the data switches to provide the value to load into the memory address. Then you would push a button to 'load' and you would have loaded a single value into a single word (2 bytes on a 16 bit machine) in memory. Believe me, paper tape readers that could read binary data into memory at the rate of 75 bytes per second were a real relief, providing orders of magnitude improvements in productivity.

Compilers for higher level languages began to show up 3-5 years into the mini-computer era. Languages such as Fortran, Cobol, Algol, and later Pascal, Lisp and others became available in the mid to late 70's. Disks began to show up. Then things took off because high level language, pretty good debuggers and disks provided more orders of magnitude improvements in productivity. Still, though, Operating systems did not imply built-in or joined-at-the hip applications. Device drivers began to be offered by vendors as more software to complement the computing hardware. There were no apps like spreadsheets, document processors like word, powerpoint, etc.

Then came the micro-computer, a processor on a chip, which enabled the new onslaught of 'personal computers' within a couple of more years. That was the big game-changer. Killer apps made the little computers have real value to individuals. Networking began to become available to individuals. The big technology enabler for that was in 1979 when the ethernet standards working group was formed.

From then on, the race was on. Operating systems, device drivers, software development environments, killer apps proliferated. Each begat the next. Now many people have lost sight of where the operating system ends and the other stuff takes over.

So the answer the original question posed in this thread is...
RTOS, a tiny, but very well featured, operating system that I and another guy wrote in assembly language back in the late 1960's. We never wrote a manual. We just had notebooks. We used it for about 6-8 years very successfully.
 

Nibiru2012

Quick Scotty, beam me up!
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I have to go for now, I can't stand to do anything right now. Bless you all, this has been a fine home for me. I'm going nowhere, but need to rest badly, the slighest task is bothersome now. I'll be back again.
Cat - All of us here at W7Forums will be praying for you and the return of your health. The PM you sent me a couple of weeks ago brought tears to my eyes. I am 58, yet I am so thankful for the health that I have. You're WAY TOO YOUNG to be going through with this.

I personally wish you a speedy return and hope things get better. Demerol is a very heavy drug to be prescribed. My father was a pharmacist, Asst Dean of Pharmacy at the University of Kansas to be exact in his later years.

Have you gotten any second opinions? Perhaps homeopathy?

All my best to you sir! With that I will leave you with this:

Traditional Irish Blessing and Toast
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
And the rain fall softly on your fields
And until we meet again, May God hold
you in the hollow of his hand



Nibs
 

catilley1092

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draceena and Nibiru, thanks for your support, you'll never know what it means to me. Ever since my surgery in 2006, which was supposed to straighten out my illness, my life has been a constant hell. The surgery did strengthen and stabilized my spine, but there were complications, which were explained to me beforehand. However, it was a damned if you do, or damned if you don't surgery. My lumbar region of the spine was in danger of collapse, which would have severed my spinal cord, and that would have led to numerous problems, including death.

At the time of the surgery, I had severe pain in my legs & hips, which were due to nerves being pinched. I was given a good chance of the surgery stabilizing my spine, which it did. However, during the surgery, which lasted 7 or 8 hours, there was damage done to the nerve roots, and this is what led to me needing to be on pain meds since then. I go to a pain management specialist, who attempted every procedure possible to free me from narcotic use, but to no avail. At that point, I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, a very bad condition, one that can strike any point of my spine at will.

So recently, about four months or so ago, I noticed pain in my neck, along with numbness in the wrists and hands, which has led me not being able to use my computer as much as I wish. Sometimes, they are accompanied with headaches, and a couple of times, a toothache. My dentist found nothing wrong with my tooth, except the nerve being inflamed. He offered to pull it, but cautioned me that most likely, others would soon follow, and I don't want to be toothless.

A recent CT scan (they can't do a MRI because of the titanium hardware in my spine) revealed that I have two bulging discs in the base of my neck, along with nerve inflammation in the area. This is very similar to what happened to me earlier in my life. My family doctor and my spine surgeon suggested putting further surgery off as long as possible, citing my already diminished quality of life, and the chance of a successful neck surgery would be half the chance that I was given on my back surgery.

So, with these things in mind, my surgeon placed me on Demerol, and had me stop taking the Opana, another potent immediate release opioid. So now I have two 100/mcg fentanyl patches on, that I change every 72 hours, and take 150mg Demerol every three to four hours as needed, and have the option to take two tablets twice during the day, if necessary.

Due to the fact of the high potency of these meds, my doctor has asked me to surrender my drivers license by my next appointment, for obvious reasons. My continued driving would be a disaster waiting to happen, and I certainly don't want to harm anyone. So for the meantime, it's a waiting game, when I can't stand the pain anymore, my options will have ran out, I'll have to undergo the knife once again.

As far as that bitch of a wife that I have, I'm sure that deep down, she's delighted by this. She seldom helps me, always going to see her kids and granddaughter, and leaving me to fend for myself. The only reason that she stands by me is the fact that I draw a much larger monthly check than her (she's disabled, too), and there's a $250,000 life insurance policy that she is the irrevocable beneficary of (due to a prior separation agreement in 1995). She pays the premiums on it, I refuse to do so.

But at this time, I have good and bad days, and the bad is far outweighing the good. I'm starting to have memory lapses, and often in a state of confusion. And getting more and more bedridden by the day. I can only sit for a short period, and can hardly stand at all. I do try to keep my mind off of my illness by being on the computer, and doing different things with them. My wife complains about that, saying that I spend too much money on it, but it's perfectly fine for her to do for her children and granddaughter. As I've said, she leaves me alone a lot, but really, I don't give a damn, she can go live with them, as far as I'm concerned. I was on Xanax for our relationship problems long before my other medical issues needed attention, and still am.

But I've got to rest a bit, I'm not going anywhere, but cannot spend the kind of time I once did on here. If I do have to be in a hospital for my condition (surgery), I'll let you know, so everyone won't think I "just left". Love you all.

Cat
 

yodap

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Nintendo Gameboy! :D
Then Win 98 in '98.
 
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tnx u a lot TorrentG for these pis..great memories...when u wrote about cassette recorder I remember how much I was happy when my mother buy disk drive in (west, in this time) Germany for my C64 coz in ex Yugoslavia early 80tih it was not possible to buy :)
 
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My early experiences began in 1968. What a time for computer geeks. They were a new breed and hadn't even been named yet.

Computers did not come with operating systems then. It was the early days of 'mini-computers.' We had to write our own operating systems. No such software item was available otherwise.

In those days operating systems for small machines, versus mainframes, were really task scheduling systems. My first operating system was an 'rtos', real-time operating system, running on a 16 bit Digital Equipment Systems mini-computer with 32,000 bytes of memory. The equivalent processor clock rate was well under 1 MHz. I believe it was in the range of 250 KHz. Today we are pushing 10,000 times faster speeds, plus we now have multiple cores; a concept unheard of in those days.

Two of us got together and wrote our own operating system, debugged it and got it up and running in about 4 months. It was about 6,000 bytes in size. We provided multi-threading, multi-tasking, prioritized and nested interrupt handling and direct memory access for input and output. Along the way we had to develop a debugger so we could make better headway. Virtually no software came with a computer beyond an assembly language assembler and loader. We had to write our own drivers for almost all of our devices, except paper tape readers. Printers were slow to be introduced. We had to write our own drivers for our first printers. There were no monitors, no disks, no ethernets. Magnetic tape readers were used sometimes but were a luxury, not a common commodity. Magnetic tapes were about an inch wide on 12-18" spools. Early magnetic tape readers were about 6 feet tall and cost about the same as a couple or a few engineer's annual salary.

Operating systems did not imply any applications, unlike today's OS with all kinds of included applications and middleware and such. Device drivers and handlers were not part of operating systems. There was no 'protocol' stack. Code developement tools were hard to come by above assembly language level code. We often even worked directly in binary machine language; i.e., 1's and 0's, hand assembled code manually inserted into memory one computer word at a time via front panel switches or read in from binary punched on paper tape. For manual input there would be one switch for each bit position in a computer 'word' of 8, 16, 24 bits ... yes there were 24 bit machines. There would be another set of switches for the address. One would set up the data switches to point to a memory address and the data switches to provide the value to load into the memory address. Then you would push a button to 'load' and you would have loaded a single value into a single word (2 bytes on a 16 bit machine) in memory. Believe me, paper tape readers that could read binary data into memory at the rate of 75 bytes per second were a real relief, providing orders of magnitude improvements in productivity.

Compilers for higher level languages began to show up 3-5 years into the mini-computer era. Languages such as Fortran, Cobol, Algol, and later Pascal, Lisp and others became available in the mid to late 70's. Disks began to show up. Then things took off because high level language, pretty good debuggers and disks provided more orders of magnitude improvements in productivity. Still, though, Operating systems did not imply built-in or joined-at-the hip applications. Device drivers began to be offered by vendors as more software to complement the computing hardware. There were no apps like spreadsheets, document processors like word, powerpoint, etc.

Then came the micro-computer, a processor on a chip, which enabled the new onslaught of 'personal computers' within a couple of more years. That was the big game-changer. Killer apps made the little computers have real value to individuals. Networking began to become available to individuals. The big technology enabler for that was in 1979 when the ethernet standards working group was formed.

From then on, the race was on. Operating systems, device drivers, software development environments, killer apps proliferated. Each begat the next. Now many people have lost sight of where the operating system ends and the other stuff takes over.

So the answer the original question posed in this thread is...
RTOS, a tiny, but very well featured, operating system that I and another guy wrote in assembly language back in the late 1960's. We never wrote a manual. We just had notebooks. We used it for about 6-8 years very successfully.

Sounds like an old GE 225 or IBM 4110.
 
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first operating system

my first os was pcdos 3.3 on a modified IBM 5150, back in 1990. we put and old dosshell called geoworks on it. weve come a long way since then.
 
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The fist operating that I've ever used is MS windows 98.... I had purchased my first computer in 1990, and I' used that computer about 8 years.... and in 2005 I used my second Operating system Windows XP home Edition....
Chandler Homes for Sale
 
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Windows 3.11 > '95 >'98>XP>7.
Linux Mint 5 >6>8. Then stopped playing with Linux.
Mac OS 10.4 Tiger.
 
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Mine was a windows 3.0 by a company called CompuAdd a 25 MHz CPU no math coprocessor 4 meg of memory, Cannot remember the DOS version that it came with. No Sound or Modem I think it had a basic Dimond card as the video card minimal amount of memory on the card. I also a printer color one only it was not a bubble jet that also. Sound card, Modems, and Bubble Jet printers were in their early stages for the PC and were expensive same for memory which was about 40 to 50 dollars per Meg so a 4 gig stick went for 160 to 200 dollars. Good Bubble Jests were in the 400 plus range. Lasers were could not be afforded by the normal home user. I got my machine December of 1992
 
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The fist operating that I've ever used is MS windows 98.... I had purchased my first computer in 1990, and I' used that computer about 8 years.... and in 2005 I used my second Operating system Windows XP home Edition....
I wonder how did you use Windows 98 OS on a machine purchased in 1990 or did you just use DOS until you installed Windows 98
 
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I have fond memories of playing Dune 2, Commander Keen IV Secret Of The Oracle, Wolfenstein 3D and a Predator game on a 286 machine way back in the early 90s as a kid. I can't remember which DOS version was that though (could be anything from 5.0 to 6.22) and I remember using the HDSIT command before turning the PC off.
 
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my first experaince was on TRS-80 (Radio shack) it had a 16k expasion ram, tape drive to save data. I wrote a program for football every one would pick there 12 teams for the week (after I programmed it ) I then wrote a program that would tally the wins an loses for the season. It took 4 programs to make it all work
 
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Hello,

While this has already been mentioned ..


I too remeber having a C64 with GEOS on it, guess ou could say it was ONE OF if not the first iterations of windows back when I was younger.

Had the thing "all decked out", for its time frame. Had the Floppy drive(2 acctually) , tape drive, modem, mouse, etc.

Ahh those were the days.

LoneWolf
 
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Windows 3.1 running on a Compaq ProLinea 4/33 486 desktop with a 33 MHz processor, 8 KB RAM and a massive 120 MB HDD. Considered state of the art system in 1992.
 
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