Guide to Multitasking Operating Systems:Introduction

This document is designed to take away at least some of the mystery behind multi-tasking operating systems, specifically OS/2, so that someone in a support position can better troubleshoot problems that may arise on a computer system. A brief overview of the architecture of micro-computers is given, most importantly CPUs and memory, because it is necessary to know a little about the hardware when dealing with how operating systems are designed and how they work. Some topics presented here may not be important to someone in a support role, but there are some people that take interest in these things, and that is why they are the topics are dealt with.

From a high-level viewpoint, a computer system contains the following components:
 * 1) Hardware
 * 2) Operating System
 * 3) Application Software

The first section of this document, Fundamentals of Hardware Organization ,deals with the first component, hardware. The concept of the multilevel machine is introduced so that the workings of a computer can be viewed at different levels of complexity.

The second and third sections, Fundamentals of Operating Systems and Overview of the OS/2 Operating System, deal with the second component, operating systems. In the Fundamentals of Operating Systems, the motives,terms, and algorithms behind operating systems are presented in a generalized fashion in order for the reader to glean the concepts and not be overwhelmed by the details. In the Overview of the OS/2 Operating System, the same concepts from the second section are applied to the specifics of one particular multi-tasking PC operating system.

The third component, Application Software, is not dealt with here because applications are more or less users of the resources that the operating system has available and the subject itself is inherently not generalizable...