Originally posted by Curtis+Feb. 02 2003, 10:58 pm--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Curtis @ Feb. 02 2003, 10:58 pm)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-Myname@Feb. 03 2003, 1:56 pm
Workbench was the standard Amiga OS. The way I remember it, it pretty much invented 'windows' in OS's, but that's probably nowhere near accurate.
I had an Atari STE in those days, so I'm more of a TOS man (insert joke here).
Yes, Tape Operating System is possibly the computing world's most illconceived acronym.
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Umm... TOS stood for
Tramiel's Operating System, after Jack Tramiel, the main man at Atari who pulled the strings to make the ST/TT family of computers happen. And wouldn't you know it, he had formerly been with Commodore, who were now battling him with their Amigas.
On that note, Workbench isn't really the Amiga's OS - that's Kickstart, which actually sits in a 512KB ROM chip. Workbench is a disk-based collection of software that basically provides the entire GUI experience (although basic window functionality is part of Kickstart - the Amiga's core OS is completely graphical, no text or "DOS" mode). I always thought the whole system was amazingly flexible, well thought-out, efficient and FAST. My decade-old A500 still boots in 6 seconds flat to a full system.