Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 18:15:08 +1200 From: physmsa AT cantua DOT canterbury DOT ac DOT nz (Mr M S Aitchison) Subject: Multiuser OpenDOS (was Re: CP/M web site looking for CP/M-86 To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Message-id: <199709170615.SAA04160@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz> Precedence: bulk > > : [Caldera has sole CP/M-86, Concurrent DOS, etc] > So.. OpenDOS will _never_ be multitasking OS.. > Too bad. I don't think this stops OpenDOS becoming a multitasking operating system, or even a multi-user one (which I think you mean). OpenDOS has some aspects of a multi-user/multi-tasking system left in it which can be easily built upon. The details of where the user ID, permissions, etc are stored in a FAT directory are relatively unimportant (they happen to clash with what Win95 does with these fields, but we aren't limited to putting them in those bytes, nor to FAT, in the long run). The key thing is that there are system calls to get/set various things we sort of need in "real" operating systems, and the key change we have to make is for individual tasks (which *are* possible at the moment, of course) to have their own copies of system parameters (like User ID, current directory). After that, it is pretty much a question of what goodies external program add (like a login program, or telnetd/xdm software) that makes the PC running OpenDOS useful to others. Even without any changes to the o/s, many BBS programs "fake" a multitasking OS of the type you are thinking of, it is just that we can do better building such stuff into the depts of the system instead of tacking it onto the side. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Aitchison, Physics & Astronomy \_ Phone : +64 3 3642-947 a.h. 3371-225 University of Canterbury, (/' Callsign: ZL3TQE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------