[Coco] origins of OS-9

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:08 PM, George Ramsower
<georgeramsower at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- From: Aaron Wolfe

> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 7:46 PM

>

> Hi,

>

> I'm writing an article about OS-9 for a "retro computing" magazine.

> I'm interested in exactly how and why OS-9 came to exist and any

> related stories.

>

> --------------------------

>

>  A long time ago in a place far away, I seem to recall...

>

>  I read somewhere that the origin of OS9 for the COCO was initiated by

> Motorola.

>  I'm sure the motivation was sales of chips.

>  The way I remember this is that Motorola was already hooked up with both

> Tandy and Microware. Motorola negotiated some sort of understanding and OS9

> was released for the 64K Color Computer.

>  I have no clue of the origins of OS9 except for what I've just told y'all

> and, that's just rusty memory.

>

>  I think my "wet RAM" may have dried out and now it's rusting and corroding

> and ...

>


This is suggested in a few different places, although all seem to be
personal accounts, nothing "official".  But I think the general
consensus is that Motorola introduced Microware to Tandy, and this is
how OS-9 came to the CoCo.  Motorola also apparently owned a portion
of Microware at this time, so there was likely quite a bit of
collaberation going on, the Basic09 project being the most famous.

The article I'm working on is not CoCo centric, although I plan to
talk about OS-9's tour of duty on our favorite machines.  I have found
enough talk about OS-9 in the 68 Micro Journal prior to the CoCo era
to suspect the Tandy deal was not directly part of the reason OS-9
came to be.  It seems Motorola was working with all these parties
around the release of the 6809 (Tandy with the Agvision/Videotex) so
there could have been some influence.. not sure.



> George

>

>

>

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