[Coco] OS-9 History

[Harry Hurst]

> On 04/26/2013 07:17 PM, Thierry Mella wrote:
>> Greetings from Belgium,
>>
>> First of all, would you excuse my "english", but french is my mother
>> language.
> Greetings from Iowa!
>
> Your English is far superior to my French, which is what I've picked up
> here and there mostly from singing early music in French... and French
> has moved on quite a bit since the day "Ja Nus Hons Pris" was written,
> or even "Douce Dame Jolie". :)
>
>> I wonder what is the history of OS-9 level one ? Is it just an attempt
>> to create a "Unix clone" on the 6809 ? Or are there somes others
>> reasons ?
> What I recall hearing was that Motorola asked Microware to develop what
> became BASIC09, and then someone realized there needed to be an
> operating system to live underneath it, and then there was OS-9.
>> Why has it been developed ? For which market need ??
>>
> Microware, before OS-9, wrote various things for the Motorola 6800,
> including a real-time kernel. It was only natural to offer it to people
> wanting a (soft) real-time OS for embedded systems, though many used it
> for development as well. It was greatly influenced by the 6809's
> creators' notions of how software would be sold in the future--see the
> three-part article in the January-March 1979 BYTE. The title, I believe,
> is "The 6809: a Microprocessor for the Revolution", by Terry Ritter and
> two other people whose names, alas, I don't remember.
>
I haven't found these articles themselves, yet, but I did find this PDF by
the same authors:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftlindner.macmess.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2006%2F09%2Fbyte_6809_articles.pdf&ei=VxF9UaD2H6WC2gXPsIHIBQ&usg=AFQjCNGuu1GbJbcwbgp5fNA_JAd5ohC5pQ&bvm=bv.45645796,d.b2I

I hope that mess comes through OK. If not, just concatenate the 4 or 5
lines together to get the full URL. It's kind of interesting, though it is
off topic as far as this particular thread is concerned.

HH