On Sun, 03 Feb 2019 09:30:14 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Looking down the process list it is also instrucytove to see how fewe
> priocesses weer actally ruinng,. A Lot of power and RAM goes running a
> desktop methinks

Yep.

Just compare what we were able to do with mainframes, minis and 8-bit
microcomputers back in the day when interactive devices were 24x80
textmode terminals or teletypes:

- my university's scientific computer, an Elliott 503, had 8Kwords of 39
  bit memory (call it 48KB equivalent because each word held two
  instructions). It used paper tape for input and a lineprinter for
  output and everything we ran on it was written in Algol 60.

- after university, the computer bureau where I worked had four
  teletype terminals plus an RJE device (remote cardreader and
  printer)and ran additional background jobs under a multiuser,
  multitasking OS on a 32 Kword (96KB equivalent) 1902S with 2
  60MB disks, 6 tape drives plus card and paper tape readers and a
  fast (1250 lpm) printer.

- my 6809 FLEX box was a perfectly adequate development system with 48K
  RAM and a pair of 1.2MB floppies. I wrote code in assembler, PL/9 and C
  on that and so did everybody else with similar kit.

- Back in the MS-DOS days Bill Gates was on record as saying that nobody
  could ever need more than 640 KB of RAM (the limit for an IBM PC-AT).

RAM only mushroomed with the appearance of multicolour graphical desktops
and the idea that all apps MUST have a graphical UI or users' brains
would explode.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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