MagiC a multitasking OS for the Atari ST

[@AtariCrypt]

My favourite OS for the ST. The compatibility is sometimes an issue but the speed and reliability is superb. I remember buying a few versions, the first being Mag!X

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

They had to change the name for legal reasons I think, but I can't remember why. Funnily its the X on the end that makes me somtimes pronounce MagiC as Magic-C :-)

[@terminalterminus]

This brings back memories of running MagicMac on my Apple Quadra 840av...

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

I have an old Powerbook G4 in the house. I was wondering if I could try MagiC on that.

[@ernestuz]

I never extended my ST this much, so the video is very interesting to watch. Thanks!

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@invers54321]

Hi, I enjoy your videos very much. From the mid-1980s to well into to 90ies I used the atari professionally as a scientist. I first acquired an Atari STfm and later I upgraded to Atari TT and finally moved to using MagiCMac. The best combination in my view is MagiC + NVIDI + Ease. I struggled to make Hatari running like I used to in the early 90s. In the end I found a solution; I used dd to make a 100mb scsi drive, then formated and partitioned with ICD tools and finally installed hddriver as hard disk driver. Now I am enjoying the full experience of my 90s setup running as Atari TT with 14+32mb ram. I have also found most of the software I was using then, except Xact from scilab.

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Emulators are sweet. I doubt I'll ever own a TT or a falcon. It's not just the cost, it's justifying the spend. I do vave an STFM and and STE, but Hatari is brilliant on the Mac. I want to try experimenting wity Steem on PC too.

[@Xenon0000000000001]

I used Mag!X 2 as my main OS (when not playing games) for the last couple of years with my STE (upgraded to 4MB) as my main machine. I was always amazed by how it could handle preemptive multitasking and still be massively faster than plain old GEM. I also had an insanely complex SuperBoot setup with every function key mapped to a different configuration to handle different screen modes, Mag!X on/off, SpeedoGDOS on/off, and a gazillion accessories and boot apps. Sadly, my old HDD with this setup is kaput. For the desktop, I remember playing around with Neodesk, but mostly used Magxdesk, just because I think it worked better with Mag!X and was very fast. I vaguely remember using Kaosdesk as well, so maybe you could add that to your desktop battle, if it's not too late. Anyway, it's great to see some videos showing what the ST/STE was really capable of.

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Thanks for the tip, I hadn't come across Kaosdesk before I'll give it a look. As for your old desktop set up, time to grab a copy of Hatari or Steem and recreate it!

[@welliben]

It would be nice to have a round up video for all the OS's and desktops which quickly goes through pluses and minuses for each for ST newbs maybe, such Geneva - most compatible, lightest memory footprint.. Magic - fastest, probably the most polished, Mint most modern/ advanced and so on :)

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

It's in the works. It's the channel's first birthday at the end of November. I was thinking about doing it for that.

[@saurondp]

I never played around with MagiC, my multitasker was always Geneva. Didn't realize it was pre-emptive multitasking. Guess I know now!

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

If you've seen my other series on Geneva and NeoDesk, I'm also a big fan. That combination was my favourite Desktop / productivity environment for years. I am looking forward to trying Magic/Jinnee and I think that'll be a blast

[@Pedro8k]

So much in term of hardware and software i never new was available for the st way after i stopped using it.

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Pick up a copy of Hatari and start experiencing it again :-)

[@keopsequinox1624]

Never used MagiC. Nice video

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Thanks! Magic was amazing in it's time

[@MRSTU1210]

Madness subscribed

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Welcome onboard!

[@Axacqk]

Is there a written version of this tutorial somewhere?

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Unfortunately not.

[@fourthhorseman4531]

Impressive! Does it have memory protection?

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

I don't think so, there's no mention of it in the manual. MiNT is your boy for that.

[@welliben]

Problem with memory protection on the Atari is that the 68k in the ST can't do it properly (although the Falcon and TT can). As most users were on the ST it was fairly pointless to implement other than for certain uses. Also memory protection breaks a lot more ST apps (originally designed for the very basic cooperative multitasking of GEM) than not, so I always ended up running Mint in 'NP' mode with no protection anyway.

[@Barnaclebeard]

no MMU in the 16-bit machines.

[@welliben]

@@Barnaclebeard It's not the MMU (which the ST defintely had :) ), it's the fact the 68000 CPU doesn't properly implement a supervisor mode I believe. The 68010 was produced for that reason, and all later 68k CPUs have been fixed in that respect. The Amigas with 68000s have the same issue.

[@carlosbragatto]

Will any of this run on a non-030 ST, like, on my Mega STE?

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Yep. It's perfect for multitasking on Vanilla ST stock, your Mega STE would be fine.I'd recommend 4MB of memory, but 2 would do at a push

[@vertigoz]

Damn, it's almost like AmigaOS!

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

Only not :-)

[@IkarusKommt]

68000 CPU series cannot multitask. They have no memory mapper, no memory protection, no memory relocation, nada. What is shown in the video is called pseudo-multitasking.

[@pweddy1]

Memory protection is a nice to have, but not required for multi tasking. All you require is a timer that can trigger an interrupt. When the interrupt occurs you save the machine state, mostly the registers, save it to a context table and restore the state of another task from a stored context. Now without hardware memory management you can step on other tasks memory if you have a corrupt pointer, but you can still do it.

[@commodoreisnottheonlyfruit]

@pweddy1 is correct. The psudo-multitasking OS replacements for the Atari ST were systems like Geneva which used cooperative multitasking.

[@IkarusKommt]

@@pweddy1 That is pseudo-multitasking, such as implemented by OS-9 or Minix. It is unusable in practice, like on Amigas with their "Guru Meditation" blue screens every hour. The real multitasking virtualizes the access to hardware, including the RAM.

[@pweddy1]

@@IkarusKommt The first Unix was built on a PDP 11 with 64k of ram and no memory protection. I think you are limiting your understanding. In the early days, you did whatever you had to do to get the job done.

[@Alphadec]

only Amiga makes it possible

[@barkmonster]

It’s UNIX-based like MiNT or NeXTStep of the time was. Amiga nothing to do with it.