[Coco] How much memory

[Frank Swygert]

As Steve said, OS-9 was designed in the late 70s/early 80s when anything more than 64K was a dream for 8 bit computers. Memory was a bit expensive, and everything was done with text screens. Who needed even 64K? Only a (for the time) sophisticated OS like OS-9 could fully use 64K! Then graphics came along and needed more memory, programs became more sophisticated (and slopier coded!), memory and computer prices started dropping, etc.

The real limitation for OS-9 is the system space, which is limited to 32K I believe... or is it 64K? Part of the problem there is it's an 8 bit OS. I'm not familiar emnough with the internal workings of OS-9 to comment further. I do recall that having enough system space to load modules from the boot list is a problem though. Get around that and it would be much nicer! The 2mb limitation may have something to do with the system being 8 bit also, not sure.

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Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:52:08 -0400
From: "RJLCyberPunk"<cyberpunk at prtc.net>

I find it odd that OS9 has that limitation that all other current computer
operating systems do not have. why have the designers of OS9 built a 2MB
memory address limitation?

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars"
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