[Coco] OS-9 History

[James Jones]

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.

    James