A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems - Mac OS X Internals

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62 Chapter 1 A Technical History of Apple’s Operating Systems “Gestalt” is originally a German word that means wholeness, shape, or form. In one of its connotations, it is used to denote a structure or configuration integrated to form a functional unit in such a way that the properties of the whole are not derivable by summation of its parts. 1.4.3. GS/OS As noted earlier, the Apple ][ had a rather long life span. After the release of the Macintosh in 1984, the Apple ][ still existed as a product. The Apple ][GS was introduced in 1986, almost as a bridge between the old and the new. It was the first and only 16-bit Apple ][, and had impressive multimedia abilities (the “GS” stood for graphics and sound). Its notable features included the following. • A 6502-compatible 37 65C816 processor. The firmware-resident monitor allowed assembling and disassembling instructions for both processors. • Support for 24-bit addressing, which allowed memory expansion up to 8 MB. The monitor could handle both 16-bit and 24-bit addresses. • Two very high-resolution graphics modes: 320×200 with a 16-color palette and 640×200 with a 4-color palette. • RGB and NTSC video outputs. • A 32-voice Ensoniq Digital Oscillator chip that could be driven by firmware to produce up to 15 musical instruments. • A mouse-driven, color desktop interface with windows and menus. A built-in control panel desk accessory allowed the user to set machine parameters for display, disk drives, processor speed, serial ports, and so on. • Two standard serial ports that could be used with AppleTalk. The Apple ][GS had several other additions or improvements over previous Apple ][ machines. Apple ProDOS was forked into 8- and 16-bit versions to accommodate the Apple ][GS. After using ProDOS 16 as the computer’s operating system for a short 37 The user could select either the 1 MHz processor clock speed of the 6502, or a faster 2.8 MHz.
Mac OS X Internals (www.osxbook.com) 63 time, Apple replaced it with GS/OS: a new 16-bit native-mode system that signifi- cantly improved performance on many fronts such as boot time, disk access time, and program launch time. Figure 1–18 shows a screenshot of GS/OS. FIGURE 1–18 GS/OS GS/OS had several modern features. It had the concept of file system transla- tors (FSTs)—a generic file interface that allowed different file systems to be read from and written to. The concept was along similar lines as AT&T’s file system switch, Sun Microsystems’ vnode/vfs, and DEC’s gnode that were being introduced in the mid-1980s to allow multiple file systems to coexist. GS/OS eventually went on to have FSTs for various file systems: Macintosh HFS, ISO/High Sierra, Apple- Share, and native file systems of Apple DOS 3.3, Apple Pascal, MS-DOS, and Pro- DOS. Since the AppleShare FST allowed GS/OS to access an AppleShare file server using AppleTalk networking, the GS/OS Finder could browse over the network. GS/OS could even be network booted.
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A Technical History of Apple’s Op
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Dear Reader This is a supplementary
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About Mac OS X Internals Mac OS X w
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A Technical History of Apple’s Op
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Mac OS X Internals (www.osxbook.com
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C H A P T E R 1 A Technical History
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