[Coco] Other Operating Systems

[John E. Malmberg]

Jones, Orville CPT wrote:
> I am sending this email from Southern Uzbekistan. I'm
> overseas serving our country in the Army Reserve. In a small way, you guys
> make me feel like I am back home.

Good luck over there.

> From my limited experience with the Color Computer I know that there has
> been several operating systems for the CoCo:
> FLEX
> OS-9
> DECB (Disk Extended Color Basic)
> NitrOS-9
   HDB-DOS - An extension to DECB.  Probably a few others.

   Standalone programs that may or may not take advantage of the ROMS.

> I know I probably missed one. What other operating systems has there been
> for the CoCo? Has anyone ever thought about writing a new one for the CoCo
> recently? What are the challenges or limitations to such an idea?

And operating system needs utilities and programs.  Nitros is basically 
a reimplementation of OS-9.

Unless the new operating system can run the old programs, or you have 
new programs for it, it will not have much to do.  The challenges is the 
fun of learning.

One of the issues with the emulators is that we do not have full 
copyright clearance to publish the original ROMS.

It might be useful to write a compatable BASIC preserving the known 
assembly entry points that can be used instead of the original ROMS. 
The challenge is to do it write, and also implement several enhancements.

If the new basic was designed to use a hard drive, it could effectively 
have unlimited program sizes, and allow old DECB programs to be run 
under OS-9.

Getting FLEX-09 to run on an emulator or on a COCO-3 could also be a 
challenge.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only