#: 12405 S1/General Interest
25-Sep-91 15:19:09
Sb: #12402-WHAT'S AN OS-9 ???
Fm: Lee Veal 74726,1752
To: Victor Epstein 70004,515
Victor,
OS-9 was originally written for the Motorola 6809. The Tandy CoCo product
family (1/2/3) has always used the 6809 as its processor. When the 68000 CPU
was developed it seemed natural to extend OS-9 to that processor as well. The
68K version of OS-9 is sometimes called OSK, but it's still officially called
OS-9. With the advent of better Intel processor chips, it became feasible to
extend the OS-9 product line into the Inael chip world. OS-9000 is a
"portable" version of OS-9, that is, it's predominately written in C. Only
very low level routines are written in the host processors native machine
language.
OS-9000 will run on Motorola 680x0 processors and is slated, I believe, to
run on some of their RISC processors as well. It also runs on the Intel '386
processor. Microware is finishing up an MS-DOS emulator, that will allow a 386
host running OS-9000 to run multiple MS-DOS applications.
OS-9(000) is a real-time, multi-tasking, multi-user operating system which
has some similarities to Unix, but with a better interrupt handling system (for
better handling of the real-time applications). The real-time functionality is
facilitated by some special OS-9 features, namely, preemptive task switching,
process execution control and fast, flexible interrupt service routines. More
detail on this can be found in the OS-9 Catalog.
OS-9 for the CoCo3 even does windows. We've been multi-tasking and doing
windows for years, in fact. My CoCo3 here at work uses an Epson Equity II+ as
a terminal through a multi-port serial card that I have plugged into the CoCo3.
Microware Systems Corporation developed OS-9.
They can be reached by mailpat:
1900 N.W. 114th St
Des Moines, Ia 50325-7077
ph: (515) 224-1929
Ask for Steve Johnson.
Ask him to send you an OS-9 Catalog and/or an OS-9 Sourcebook. I believe
they also have counterparts for these books for OS-9000, too.
Lee
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