[Coco] origins of OS-9

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

Think about OS-9 perhaps this way.

The instruction set of the 6809 was designed for PIC (Position Independent 
Code)

No OS at that time, FLEX included, had PIC processor support planned.

For Motorola to gain any market penetration there had to be OS support for 
development tools, thus OS-9. The 6809 instruction set was way different 
from the 6800 (Or the 6502 which was done by the 6800 people).

BASIC09 was a step head of most basics at that time. That was it's intent.

TSC's FLEX when it was ported to 6809 had a preprocessor for it's basic that 
made it a more reasonable basic and due to how TSC's basic was done a more 
possible contender.

Once OS-9 was really present FLEX was left in the dust.

Tooting my own horn again, Urbane started with TSC's Basic Preprocessor. 
When I tried the preprocessor for TSC's basic I did not know how wonderful 
it was.

SHF

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 8:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] origins of OS-9


On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:08 PM, George Ramsower
<georgeramsower at gmail.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: Aaron Wolfe
> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 7:46 PM
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm writing an article about OS-9 for a "retro computing" magazine.
> I'm interested in exactly how and why OS-9 came to exist and any
> related stories.
>
> --------------------------
>
> A long time ago in a place far away, I seem to recall...
>
> I read somewhere that the origin of OS9 for the COCO was initiated by
> Motorola.
> I'm sure the motivation was sales of chips.
> The way I remember this is that Motorola was already hooked up with both
> Tandy and Microware. Motorola negotiated some sort of understanding and 
> OS9
> was released for the 64K Color Computer.
> I have no clue of the origins of OS9 except for what I've just told y'all
> and, that's just rusty memory.
>
> I think my "wet RAM" may have dried out and now it's rusting and corroding
> and ...
>

This is suggested in a few different places, although all seem to be
personal accounts, nothing "official".  But I think the general
consensus is that Motorola introduced Microware to Tandy, and this is
how OS-9 came to the CoCo.  Motorola also apparently owned a portion
of Microware at this time, so there was likely quite a bit of
collaberation going on, the Basic09 project being the most famous.

The article I'm working on is not CoCo centric, although I plan to
talk about OS-9's tour of duty on our favorite machines.  I have found
enough talk about OS-9 in the 68 Micro Journal prior to the CoCo era
to suspect the Tandy deal was not directly part of the reason OS-9
came to be.  It seems Motorola was working with all these parties
around the release of the 6809 (Tandy with the Agvision/Videotex) so
there could have been some influence.. not sure.


> George