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Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth

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According to Peter Flass  <Peter@Iron-Spring.com>:
>> In practice that was fine, BOS and DOS only ran one program at a time
>> so it'd usually be waiting for the I/O to finish anyway.
>
>Definitely not. In my day DOS had three partitions. Batch ran in BG, but 
>FG1 might run a spooler or a simple TP program like MTCS. Now there are 
>more partitions, but no more /30s.

DOS could certainly have three partitions, but I doubt many people used them on
a 360/30. Multiprogramming needed storage protection, which was an extra cost
option on the /30, and at least 32K, but you could get a /30 with 16K or 24K.

Spooling wouldn't make much sense on a machine so slow that it stops when it
reads or writes anything. The manual says that "Execution of instructions is
suspended until the completion of data transfers for buffered devices" which
included most printers and card readers.

It normally only came with a multiplexor channel, which a disk or tape captured
for the length of the operation so it couldn't do disk or tape I/O and any other
I/O at the same time unless you paid extra for a selector channel.

You could run OS on a 64K /30, but only single threaded PCP, not MFT or MVT.
-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2025-09-03 11:10 +0100
  Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2025-09-03 11:55 +0100
  Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-09-03 14:13 +0000
    Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-03 23:11 +0000
    Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Alexander Schreiber <als@usenet.thangorodrim.de> - 2025-09-04 10:10 +0200
    Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-09-06 17:38 +0000
      Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2025-09-06 15:16 -0700
        Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-09-06 22:39 +0000
          Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> - 2025-09-06 18:46 -0400
            Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-09-06 23:00 +0000
              Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> - 2025-09-07 15:57 -0400
          Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth geodandw <geodandw@gmail.com> - 2025-09-06 18:48 -0400
          Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-09-07 04:11 -0400
          Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2025-09-07 14:43 -0400
            Re: slow computers, Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2025-09-08 08:10 -0700
  Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-03 23:09 +0000
    Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-09-04 07:48 -0700
      Re: Hmmm ... Downloaded Xenix - But It's *41* Floppies Worth Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-04 20:51 +0000

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