2 Jul
2016
2 Jul
'16
9:17 p.m.
The AT also had the 10 MB disk. Back when I had an AT, I ran Xenix
System III on it along with the MS C compiler, and was able to create
console-mode programs to run on everyone else's MS-DOS machines.
It's hard to remember/believe that Xenix was a Microsoft product before
DOS was.
I had an Xenix running on my AT as well.
I would say even RT-11 is somewhere between executive and OS. It could
run foreground tasks (hence the name Real Time) if properly sysgenned,
and it had a decent kernel API that you didn't have to bypass.
I remember the FB (Foreground/Background) version that had more flexibility, even so, it
didn’t preempt any running job. My second paying computer job was writing database
software for an RT-11 system. This was a port of a 370 mainframe application to do lab
test management at Hopkins hospital. This was after the two guys who were tasked with
porting it to the Series-1 were having a hard time with it. Being the wizkid, the IBM
guys brought me a 3101 Ascii terminal and asked if I could do anything with it and I
connected it to the RT system in lieu of the ADM3 I had been using.