Multitasking in the 80's Part 1 - Mac vs Sinclair QL: cooperative vs preemptive
In this journal entry I explore multitasking operating systems of the 1980's, comparing the first home computer preemptive multitasking OS, QDOS on the 1984 Sinclair QL, to that of a Macintosh II from the late 1980's running System 7.5.5. Part 1 will do side-by-side comparisons between the two machines and highlight how different preemptive is from cooperative, the latter of which was used by the Macintosh from 1987 to 2001 and by Windows from 1988 to the release of Windows 95 which allowed preemptive multitasking or 32-bit protected mode applications. Preemptive is now the standard in modern OS behavior.