[Coco] origins of OS-9

[Aaron Wolfe]

Maybe I've gotten to close to the story, but the MS/IBM relationship
and the Motorola/Microware relationship don't seem very similar, nor
do the results.

In fact, MSDOS was exactly what I would expect from a company that
just needed a way to run/sell their Basic:  hastily aquired from a 3rd
party, hacked to just barely work and pushed out the door.

The situation behind OS-9 seems to  be different, and the results
speak for themselves.  Perhaps echos of this IBM/MS relationship are
what lead to statements like the one found on Wikipedia's Microware
page explaining OS-9 almost as an afterthought.

I don't think that was actually the case.  Microware already had an
advanced real time operating system (RT/68), in fact the DAVID article
Bob posted says that RT/68 is specifically why Motorola wanted to work
with Microware on Basic09.  I strongly suspect Microware had planned
an "RT/68 like" operating system for the 6809 since the very
beginning.  Motorola had it's vision of ROM based software
distribution at the time and this influence is plain to see in OS-9.
It is clearly a collaborative work, rather than something scrounged
together by one party to satisfy the other.

-Aaron


On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Frank Swygert <farna at att.net> wrote:
> You don't realize the irony of your statement, do you? That's almost what
> happened with Microsoft! IBM came calling to get BASIC, and pretty much told
> Gate's they'd buy BASIC if he came up with an operating system to go with
> it...  Of course that was MS-DOS and not Windows, but close enough!
> Microware had to have something to run Basic09 FROM though. Maybe the
> original intent was to make it a stand-alone product similar to CoCo BASIC
> -- a programming language with minimal OS-like features so it didn't need to
> boot a separate OS to run, not a true OS. That would explain the comments
> about developing B09 then developing a full-blown OS to go with it instead
> of simpler integrated OS-like functions.
> --------------------
> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 11:47:57 -0500
> From: Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com>
> It's really not a critical point, but I find it strange that the
> origin of OS-9 is explained (in several places) as "well, we made
> Basic09 and thought we better make an OS to go with it".  It's like
> Micro$oft saying "well we had this Word processor so we thought we
> better create Windows".   If OS-9 was released even initially as a
> simple way to get Basic09 running, it might make more sense, but from
> everything I can find OS-9 was a fairly complete OS from v1.0 that
> could do much more than launch B09.
>
> --
> Frank Swygert
> Publisher, "American Motors Cars" Magazine (AMC)
> For all AMC enthusiasts
> http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
> (free download available!)
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>