[Coco] Open Letter to those who will be attending the The 24th Annual "Last Chicago CoCoFEST April 25-26, 2015

[Boisy Pitre]

Stephen,

The OS-9 Level 2 Upgrade source search reminds me of the quest for the Holy Grail — years and years of rumor and yet still no closer to finding it.

I am mystified why there is a continued desire to worship at the altar of Kevin Darling. Yes, he did some great things at one time, but now he has made it quite clear that he has no time for the CoCo community, and that was reiterated tome when I reached out to him on multiple occasions for an interview for the CoCo book.

Why anyone would continue to go to him on bended knee is beyond me. Brother Jeremy’s persistence did yield a couple of boot disks (sans source), but that’s probably the best it will get. That’s despite the rumor that Kevin’s hard drive, which contains the source, is supposedly in storage somewhere in Denver. If true, by this point in time, the platters are probably demagnetized.

If Kevin had any desire to give the sources out, he would have done so years ago. He doesn’t care about the source or about getting it out to you or anyone else.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what value the sources would have. Significant work has been done to disassemble OS-9, and the NitrOS-9 Project is result. If its resizable, movable windows that everyone wants, those modules could be disassembled and commented with some work (I’m pretty sure that these modules are in the NitOS-9 Project repository). If the effort expended to get Kevin’s hard drive had been instead focused on disassembling these modules, there would be no need to go hat in hand to Kevin Darling.

Sorry if this comes off as cynical, but I’m not sure how else to spin it. 

> On Apr 3, 2015, at 8:47 PM, Stephen H. Fischer <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> Br. Jeremy who AFAIK is in England across the pond received Kevin Darlings CoCo 3 system with the never released by Tandy new version of OS-9 Level-II. 
> 
> He sold this new version and I was one of the persons who purchased it.
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The computer's hard drive contained the source code for the never released by Tandy new version of OS-9 Level-II.
> 
> I also believe that the source code for other parts of OS-9 are on this hard drive including the original shell and shellplus source code and lots more. Maybe ALL of OS-9's source code is on that hard drive as Kevin was the leader of the project that was an official Tandy one.
> 
> I was on Delphi and patches to OS-9 were uploaded, utilities and so on. But usually not the source.
> 
> I have no proof but IMHO CI$ had the source uploaded for most of this work. Kevin was on CI$.
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> We all would benefit if Kevin Darlings system could be located and obtained for the community. A bounty like the one collected for Jeff Vavasour to write the CoCo 3 emulator I am sure Br. Jeremy would welcome in exchange for Kevin's Computer. 
> 
> I should have written this letter years ago just like I should have communicated with Little John for a copy of the ~ 120 GB that he offered. (The CoCoFest was soon to start and I decided to wait after it had occurred. Sadly it was too late in his short life.) The offer was in one of the Glenside's newsletters.
> 
> There is one other person that may have sources that we would welcome, but he and I disagreed and I am not the person to approach him. He is the owner of one of our important websites but has not posted for years now. You all know that I am not the best person to try and do these tasks.
> 
> Hopefully others will attempt these tasks.
> 
> Stephen H. Fischer
> 
> 
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