[Coco] Why OS9? was Re: Drive Wire strangeness

[Bill Pierce]

Steve,
I guess the choice of OS9 or RSDOS is a matter of personal use, experience, and more than anything.... opinion.
When I started on the Coco, I became well versed in RSDOS Basic, then a little better than intermediate with EDTASM. I soon discovered OS9 Lv 1. I loved the modularity and the system calls. OS9 Asm was "almost" the same as edtasm if edtasm had built in macros for drives, screen, graphics, text and any other I/O you need. The best RSDOS asm could offer were a few poorly documented calls to Basic for a few functions.
I also started with Basic09 then. I soon found that trying to do anything with graphics screens as I had in RSDOS that the memory limits in Lv 1 were too restrictive and eventually went back to RSDOS (regretfully).
Along came the Coco 3 and OS9 Level 2.... All of a sudden, the memory limits were not as bad, the system calls were better and the machine was faster. It didn't take me long to figure out that Level 2 was a far superior OS compared to RSDOS or even OS9 L1. Then I figured out how to put multitasking and multiple windows to work for me and found it very hard to go back to RSDOS's native 32 column screen (needed for most programming) or even 40 & 80 cols and a single screen. Yes there were a few enhancements available to use windows and more memory in RSDOS for the Coco 3 but most ended up using more memory than they saved or were buggy as well as not being standard to anyone else's Coco if I desired to publish or share my work. So I stayed with OS9 L2 and never looked back

I say this now as I work on a program suite in NitrOS9 L2, utilizing 3 windows for text editors for my source codes, 1 window for compiling my code in C and 1 window running the lastest compile of my program for reference. The program suite consists of about 50-60 source files and uses virtual memory up to 2 meg (I have 1 meg on my Coco 3), frgged subroutines and modules forked to other 64k workspaces with "pipes" passing data back and forth. All this with 3 floppies, 4 hard drives (dw4) and a 96k ramdisk for speed.
No, I don't think I could go back to RSDOS.... I would have to write a new OS to do what I do now... wait!! It's already been done... It's called OS9 :-)

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
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-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sun, Dec 8, 2013 11:08 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] Drive Wire strangeness


Robert and others:  I have been in love with the Coco since it first came 
out.  I've created many BASIC programs (games and utilities) and also many 
assembly language programs, both games and utilities.  I own a tremendous 
amount of original Coco software and hardware.  I guess I'm a collector, 
although my wife would claim I'm more of a hoarder.  I've also written a few 
magazine articles for Color Computer News and Rainbow.  So the Coco is in my 
blood, and hopefully will always be there.  When OS-9 first came out, I 
purchased it, and spent many hours reading that big fat manual that comes 
with OS-9 from Radio Shack.  At that time, I understood the basics of OS-9 
programming, although I've had no practical experience in using this 
operating system.

This message is not to start a war between OS-9 users and RSDOS/HDBDOS 
users.  I find BASIC and assembly language to be very straight-forward and 
easy to understand.  Programming is just a matter of planning, writing and 
testing.  Messages to this group often concern problems with OS-9 
programming, scripts, etc.  It seems as if OS-9 is not very intuitive, which 
might mean it is very strong.  If I put a similar effort into learning OS-9 
from manuals and other sources as I have in learning BASIC and 6809 
assembly, will I be able to write OS-9 programs just as easily?  I know this 
is really late in the game for Coco programming, but I've recently retired, 
and now have more time to spend on the Coco.  I'd love to create some kind 
of OS-9 program, even if it is not very useful, and it would be for my use 
only.

Programs that are written in OS-9 for the Coco, could they have been written 
easier in assembly or BASIC?  Were they written in OS-9 for portability 
only, or because the programmer could do things in OS-9 that they could not 
in assembly or BASIC?  I realize that BASIC is slow, and is an interpreted 
language.  Assembly is native and blazingly fast.  What are the advantages 
in writing software in OS-9, besides portability to other systems that also 
run OS-9?

Thanks for your opinions.

--- CocoSteve ---


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