BDW Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 What is your favorite classic OS? My personal favorites are MS-DOS and the classic Mac OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oesii Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 What is your favorite classic OS? My personal favorites are MS-DOS and the classic Mac OS. Aside from the OS from the 8bit Atari computers, I'm partial to MS-DOS too. Spent a solid decade on it until Windows 95 came out. I liked Mac OS but it always felt you were getting more done under the hood in DOS with all the autoexec.bat and config.sys stuff. As a bonus it was always an adventure getting sound cards and games working in DOS too 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 IRIX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cebus Capucinis Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 OS/2! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BDW Posted June 6, 2010 Author Share Posted June 6, 2010 What is your favorite classic OS? My personal favorites are MS-DOS and the classic Mac OS. Aside from the OS from the 8bit Atari computers, I'm partial to MS-DOS too. Spent a solid decade on it until Windows 95 came out. I liked Mac OS but it always felt you were getting more done under the hood in DOS with all the autoexec.bat and config.sys stuff. As a bonus it was always an adventure getting sound cards and games working in DOS too I agree with you 100% on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophero Sly Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 System 6.0.X Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoTonah Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 If I had to go with an 8-bit OS, I'd have to say GEOS for the C64. 8/16-bit, Apple GS/OS 6.0.1. 16/32-bit, NeXTSTEP. NeXT is considered "classic", isn't it? It first came out in the 80's, after all! Although to be honest I didn't use NeXTSTEP until the mid-90's. Until then I thought the Amiga OS was the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 GEM/TOS 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbd30 Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 (edited) MS-DOS is all that I know pre-Windows... first on a 8088XT and then on a 486 DX2-50. Today's computers are amazing, but one thing that DOS machines had was consistency. How your DOS PC is functioning today is most likely how it will function tomorrow. No sporadic slowdowns from Windows services or whatever, no constant updates of drivers, no convoluted registry that becomes increasingly messier every day, no headaches installing/uninstalling software due to said registry, no dozens of background processes that might slow everything down or crash your computer, etc., etc. Booting and shutting down usually took no time at all. Other people get nostalgic over the Commodore 64, Apple or Atari computer they played with as a kid. I always had a PC. I did love those machines even though they weren't always the best for gaming. Now my 1994 self would cream his pants seeing all the PC gaming I can do now just with emulators... not to mention sites like Youtube, etc. I don't know how I managed to surf the web using only a 486 DX2-50, DOS and Windows 3. Edited June 6, 2010 by mbd30 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koopa64 Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 For old classic, I'd say MS-DOS. If Windows 98(SE) and Mac OS 9 are considered classic, then I add those to my favorites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 AmigaDOS. I've had to do development under Unix (many variations), MS-DOS, Linux, and AmigaDOS. I preferred AmigaDOS to the others hands down. If I have to develop on a PC I use Linux or Cygwin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 My favorite is DOS 3 for the Atari 8-bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 I don't think the VIC-20 had an operating system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 Just it's native kernel AFAIK. But didn't earlier PETs offer CP/M-compatability...or did that enter only after the arrival of the C64? Topic: MS-DOS. Many hours spent customizing boot files to squeeze every last resource out of 640k machines Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 oh no...NOT DOS 3 (who ever said they like DOS 3 needs to see a shrink) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Friedel Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 oh no...NOT DOS 3 (who ever said they like DOS 3 needs to see a shrink) Agreed. Of the Atari OSes, DOS 2.5 wins hands down. Menus were easy to use, there was a lot of functionality, and it was compatible with everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmax2069 Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 I say MS-DOS, GSOS, system 7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Laird Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 (edited) 128 OS on the 128k Sinclair Spectrum machines. So easy to use and wonderful for helping you debug and edit basic programs. Even better on the disk machines with +3 DOS added and a very handy 32k ramdisk for storing data temoprarily in. Edited June 6, 2010 by The_Laird Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted June 6, 2010 Share Posted June 6, 2010 (edited) MS BOB and MS Xenix. and BeOS is rather good. Edited June 6, 2010 by high voltage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GratedTopping Posted June 7, 2010 Share Posted June 7, 2010 Workbench 3.9, the final version for the classic Amiga computers, is from 2000. Not as retro as some other OS's but is a total classic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FastRobPlus Posted June 8, 2010 Share Posted June 8, 2010 AmigaDOS and MS-DOS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 Dos 3.3 for the Apple ][+ & Apple //e I learned all about disks and drives and hard drives with that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wood_jl Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 oh no...NOT DOS 3 (who ever said they like DOS 3 needs to see a shrink) Agreed. Of the Atari OSes, DOS 2.5 wins hands down. Menus were easy to use, there was a lot of functionality, and it was compatible with everything. I wasn't serious with the DOS 3 comment, btw. (It was my first experience with a disk drive, though) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monzamess Posted June 9, 2010 Share Posted June 9, 2010 Another vote for AmigaOS. I cut my teeth on various 8-bits where I just wrote stupid BASIC programs or used a DOS just long enough to get games started (when I was lucky enough to have a disk drive). So I never really got into the details of the Atari or Apple II OS. Later I got a PCjr and started doing some (slightly) more serious things. I did well enough with PC DOS 2 but didn't have any affection for it. Then I got an Atari 520ST in 1987ish and thought GEM and TOS were neat, but as soon as I could save up my pennies I bought an Amiga 500. I immediately saw the light. True multitasking and a nice CLI and usable (if a bit ugly) GUI. I participated in the stupid ST vs Amiga flame wars on the local BBSs and even had an ST-owning board buddy come over to my house to see just what kind of dumbass liked the Amiga so much--I fired up a couple of programs and switched between them, then showed him Deluxe Music and Deluxe Paint and he was converted. Learning how to use the AmigaOS effectively set me up very well for college where we used Unix machines mainly. On the other end of the scale, a friend's family had a Heathkit computer his dad built. It used 8" floppies and we had to type in the bootstrap code every time the machine was powered on in order to get the disk working (no autoboot!). I can't rememeber if it used CP/M or what, but we played around with it long enough to get confused and bored. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Friedel Posted June 10, 2010 Share Posted June 10, 2010 AmigaOS was awesome. The one thing I loved on it that I have still not seen to this day is two screens, with different resolutions, being pulled up and down so you could use them both. That to me is still amazing and was something I used all the time. I would love to be able to do that today on a PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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