[Coco] Nicks Survey results

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 05 December 2003 17:26, ostro011 wrote:
>On 5 Dec 2003, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> all sorts of neat things like Jake Commanders Chrmakey editor.  I
>> was also using os9 exclusively by then.
>
>Gene (and others), please take this question in the spirit it is
> being asked.  This is something I've often wondered about.
>
>My involvement with the Coco for the past 24 years has been in
> programming it in BASIC and ML.  I purchased OS9 soon after it was
> available but could never get my arms around it, and there just was
> no driving force in my small world that would make learning and
> using OS9 beneficial to me.  The Tandy package was not very user
> friendly, at least in my eyes.
>
>I think the majority of you on this list uses OS9 either most of the
> time or all the time, as Gene stated above.  I respect that and am
> a little bit in awe of that.  I consider Mark and Boisy as good
> friends, and they are into OS9 in a huge way.  We all owe both of
> them a big debt of gratitude, as we owe many of the rest of you as
> well.
>
>OK, enough pre-amble.
>
>The combination of the 6809 and OS9, with all its multitasking
> abilities and the like, really showed off how the Coco was much
> more than the game machine Tandy sold it as.  I would love to
> tackle OS9 again, but I need to know what the rest of you find in
> OS9 that makes it so useful to you.  Is it mostly academic and a
> fun hobby, or will I be able to find it useful or at least a lot of
> fun and worth the time.  Keep in mind that my love is programming
> this 6809 machine, as time permits, especially in ML, otherwise my
> Coco's are just a fun toy for the kids to play when they are
> feeling retro or want a lesson in programming.  I'm not asking if
> OS9 will solve any of my computer problems.  I'm chained to a PC
> all day at work in my research lab.  But where will I find OS9 the
> most interesting to use?  What do you, the OS9 experts on this
> list, use OS9 for the most?
>
>I really appreciate your help in this, and I hope you don't take any
> of my comments the wrong way.
>
>Thanks!
>
>-- Steve --

Gee, thats a tall order to try and segregate into categories.  I used 
os9 because of its versatility.  I could be useing a basic09 graphics 
program in one window to edit an icon, while supercomm was hammering 
away at delphi in another multiview window, and I was hacking away at 
either some C code or assembly in yet a third window.  ISTR that left 
me with 5 unused windows from the bootup defaults I had setup.

My gradual, almost exodus from the coco was brought on by the 
revolution in internet facilities, from a dialup account on delphi to 
an account at a local isp, and that took an amiga to function as both 
the mail handler and as a bridge from the coco to the network, and 
that lasted till early 1998 when I finally decided to try linux on an 
x86 box and built one of those.  At that point the coco got taken 
downstairs and installed in my old computer desk from my office, next 
to the reloading bench, and the linux box became the network gateway 
for the amiga.  Eventually the amiga died, and this box running linux 
replaced it.

The coco3 I'm still trying to get to talking error free over a serial 
port to this box.  It still runs, I even bought a HDBDOS 
kit/controller and so on for it about a year ago.  With a 1080 
megabyte scsi disk, half for basic and half for os9, I should have 
room for absolutely anything I can imagine it could do.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP at 1400mhz  512M
99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.