Project Wiki OVERHAUL!!

[Aurora Borealis]

The old versions of those pages are still there, it's just that the others had redirects from "Mac OS _" to "Macintosh System _", and those two I haven't gotten to rewriting. Sorry about that.

Oops. Also forgot to add Apple III to one of the lists. Each "List of OS-tans" section might not match up with the complete "View All" list. Sometimes I forget to update both.

[Krizonar]

Alright, I see, on both reasonings.

Two less things for me to worry about I suppose, because I was obviously not up at midnight looking at the OS Tan wiki. Nope.

[Aurora Borealis]

From the Recent Changes section, it's obvious I can't stay focused on one section or group of characters for too long! I'll have to try again with the Apple-tans section.

[Bella]

The icons look good Aurora!

Still on the tables, I'm not completely sure what to put for the 'Class' section, like what type of OS. Among the classes I've listed include: General Purpose, Home, Professional, Server, Mainframe, Mobile and Prototype, as well as what -bit they are. Could some more be added, and are some of them redundant?

Your ideas for classes seem about right, but I think you might want to get rid of "general purpose", "home" and "professional", and maybe replace them with something like "PC" (for all home and small business-computers, be they Mac, Linux or Windows-based), "workstation" (business computers of the 80s and 90s) and "microcomputer" (since those were a VERY prevalent class of computer in the 60s through 90s). Server, Mainframe and Mobile can stay since those are also types of computer, and Prototype should stay because it can describe a lot of computers and OSes well.

[Aurora Borealis]

Okay. I got confused by the distinction between workstations and servers. PC works well enough for those consumer-level OSes, but aren't all consumer-level computers microcomputers, and have been since the 70's?

Can you give me examples of what the workstation OSes are, and the server OSes? That'll come in handy when I get to the other OS-tan sections.

I do also make the distinction between the "home computers"- i.e: Apple II, Commodores, Atari computers; the 8- or 16-bit microcomputers. Not sure if it's necessary, but it's a historical distinction.

Also what about hobbyist OSes (i.e: MenuetOS, KolibriOS, Contiki...), a subgroup of microcomputer OSes made by and for hobbyists, and aren't expected to have a more general userbase?

[Bella]

Workstations are high-end microcomputers that have only one or a few users, typically used in business or scientific applications. Examples of workstations (and workstation OSes) include the Xerox Alto, Three Rivers PERQ, the NeXTCube, various Sun workstations, and on the OS side, there's IRIX, AIX, NeXTSTEP and Solaris, though all those OSes can be used on servers as well. Servers, of course, are computers that store files for a network and can be accessed by other computers. Examples of server OSes are Solaris, OpenVMS, many versions of Linux, and quite a few IBM OSes that I'm unfortunately not familiar with.

And yes, all small computers/PCs are microcomputers, though the name is most associated with small computers from the 70s, 80s and early 90s... home computer or personal computer has become a more popular term for microcomputers in the modern day.

[Aurora Borealis]

Thanks! I'm working on a page listing the OS-tan classes, and this info has been very useful!

EDIT: Here it is! http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/OS-tan_Class

I forgot to ask, is Windows NT a workstation OS, server, or both? I also remembered that there in the 90's, there were Apple workstations running the Mac OS and there were also some running A/UX. The lines between these different classes gets blurred a lot. x_x

And what classes would CTSS, ITS, Multics, and several other contemporary OSes fall under?

[Bella]

Glad to hear that clarified things.

WinNT would be both, actually. And yeah, you're right, a lot of server systems (especially the older ones) also doubled as workstations.

CTSS, Multics and ITS are mainframe OSes. (ITS ran on the PDP-10, one of the only mainframe PDPs.) A good rule of thumb - all the classic DECs falls under the minicomputer class (except for the PDP-10 and its OSes, which would be filed under Mainframe, and the VAX and its OSes, which are more along the lines of server or workstation).

[Tsubashi]

Wow! The wiki was one of the feature I was most worried had stagnated, but I am so happy to see it has not. Thank you so much for your hard work!

I will go back and read this thread so I know what has happened, but in the meantime, what can I help with?

[Nichi]

@Tsu: I've had some trouble trying to work a few last details into the article on RedHat-tan (Stuff from her Annex bio), while keeping it flowing smoothly, so some help with that would be good

I've been a little too tied up with other things to try and take a stab at finishing it, myself

[Krizonar]

Hm, I do wish I was a wiki editor myself sometimes, as the Windows Tans have their bit-addressing under class, but only 2 Macs do. Small stuff like that bothers me man

I've always thought about being an editor but I guess I've never really asked for it.

I also see that System 6 is dated as April as AU/X is dated for February, did someone finally find a source for AU/X's specific release date? The only source I can find that is of historical context states AU/X came out in late 1988 instead of early. This means, as I stated in a conversation before, System 6 would predate AU/X.

[Bella]

@Tsu-san: Yeah, I'm really glad that work on the Wiki has continued too... I was kind of doubtful that work on the annex project and wiki (and in fact the entire non-canon OS-tan universe) would continue after C-chan left, but it actually ramped up somewhat. o___o;;

[Aurora Borealis]

@Tsubashi: Thanks! There are a lot of unused or outdated pictures that need to be cleaned out. Many of the Annex Project avatars have no longer used, old versions that should be removed to free up space.

@Krizo: I know what the bit addresses are of the Windows systems, but I'm not certain about what most of the Mac OSes would be.

-I know that Snow Leopard and Lion are 64-bit.
-Tiger and Leopard are 32/64 bit. Not sure if the earlier OSXs are also 32/64-bit or 32-bit only.
-Systems 7, 8 and 9 are 32-bit
-System 6 is 24-bit (32-bits, but uses the upper 8 bits for memory addressing). Not sure if the earlier Mac OSes are 24-bit as well.

According to this timeline on A/UX's wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX#Decline, A/UX debuted slightly before System 6 did.

@Bella: Work on those while C-Chan was still there could have been a lot more than it was, since I didn't ask many questions and didn't take the initiative very much back then. If I did, a lot more about character's and faction's backstories could have been revealed in that time. Oh, what could have been.

======

Got a lot done on System 7-tan's article! http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/Macintosh_System_7

[Bella]

I would totally love to see more bio pictures posted - and I would be willing to help collect, crop and upload them, IF I KNEW HOW TO DO IT. But I completely forget how we're supposed to upload images to the Wiki... :z

And yeah, I know what you mean ... I always wonder how things would have worked out if C-chan was into writing and actually made stories about his OS-tans (thus better documenting personality, history and backstory than our random conjecture festivals). Or if I was more knowledgeable about computer history when he was still around ... we probably would have created so many more (and possibly older) OS-tans. Then again, that means I wouldn't have had the fun of seeing a lot of them created during the second wave of non-canon OS-tan creation (during late 2009/early 2010, when Stew showed up). :/

[Tsubashi]

Well, when we are talk about Bit addressing, are we talking about addressable memory or kernel architectures? Yes, Pather was a 32-bit system, but it was able to take advantage of the G5's 64-bit architecture to address a much larger range. Then again, individual programs were still limited by the 32-bit base...

@Bella-sama:

Wiki Image Uploads: http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/Special:Upload