[Coco] The BIGGEST PROBLEM with (So-Called) NEW CoCo Hardware...

[Allen Huffman]

On Mar 5, 2017, at 10:43 AM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm sure that if a person wanted to customize a Pi enough and optimized it for a specific purpose you could get it to boot almost instantaneously.  Don't forget that Raspbian Linux is the just the preferred system.  If the Pi only had to do what a CoCo does it could boot even faster than a CoCo.

As a USB gateway, it has to at least have the full USB stack. I come from the Microware OS-9 world where we had fast boot tech and could power up a device and have it booted to a GUI and full Java (before there was "embedded java") in a few seconds. Meanwhile, Linux in the TiVo took ... longer.

During my time with Microware, I recall that DirectTV visited us, looking in to an OS for their boxes. Pity that didn't happen.

I also saw a conference room with a disassembled "famous brand" TV digital recorder, which was directed to get a bill of materials to show the difference in cost savings from using OS-9 and needing far less horsepower and memory and flash.  The goal was to show that even with paying for an RTOS instead of "free" Linux, you could come out ahead. Not sure who that was for. We were in a bunch of digital cable boxes back then.