The ST was an amazing machine for the price in the 1980s, yes indeed, and I don't think it deserves the relative obscurity it fell into later on.
Although I have never explored the MiNT OS in detail, it does seem like it found ways around a lot of the ST's limitations, while retaining a degree of compatibility.
The Amiga did amazing things with tiny resources, but that cleverness meant it was virtually impossible to expand and enhance the OS to use the better facilities provided by later, more capable CPUs, and its media chipset was so closely tied to the CPU that much of its power was lost if the sound and video chips were replaced.
In other words, its high level of integration and functionality crippled later upgrades.
(The same is largely true of Classic MacOS.)
Whereas the ST had less special hardware cleverness, and less amazing functionality, and so in time it was possible to improve and enhance it -- and yet still run the original apps.
Nowadays there is EmuTOS, a modernised, all-FOSS replacement ST OS, and part of it is based on the original DR PC GEM source code which Caldera made FOSS. That makes me really happy.
I wish someone somewhere would find, open up and share the source code of any of DR's later multitasking CP/M derivatives. DR grew CP/M into a proper multitasking networked 32-bit OS with a GUI, and it seems to be almost all lost, because it was all proprietary.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2024-04-03 10:46 am (UTC)The ST was an amazing machine for the price in the 1980s, yes indeed, and I don't think it deserves the relative obscurity it fell into later on.
Although I have never explored the MiNT OS in detail, it does seem like it found ways around a lot of the ST's limitations, while retaining a degree of compatibility.
The Amiga did amazing things with tiny resources, but that cleverness meant it was virtually impossible to expand and enhance the OS to use the better facilities provided by later, more capable CPUs, and its media chipset was so closely tied to the CPU that much of its power was lost if the sound and video chips were replaced.
In other words, its high level of integration and functionality crippled later upgrades.
(The same is largely true of Classic MacOS.)
Whereas the ST had less special hardware cleverness, and less amazing functionality, and so in time it was possible to improve and enhance it -- and yet still run the original apps.
Nowadays there is EmuTOS, a modernised, all-FOSS replacement ST OS, and part of it is based on the original DR PC GEM source code which Caldera made FOSS. That makes me really happy.
I wish someone somewhere would find, open up and share the source code of any of DR's later multitasking CP/M derivatives. DR grew CP/M into a proper multitasking networked 32-bit OS with a GUI, and it seems to be almost all lost, because it was all proprietary.