[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Boisy Pitre]

On Jan 6, 2014, at 9:57 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> I might point out that near the bottom of page 157, you give credit to the 
> 3 Canadians for doing all the heavy lifting for the 6309-ization of OS-9.  
> 
> There were more than those 3 involved, because I was the one that did 
> RBF.mn at the time.  But nobody paid any attention to my comment that SAS=8 
> in a dmode report was going to be an ankle biter.  I said at the time that 
> $10 (doubling the 8) was probably a good idea on floppies, and I routinely 
> use $20 on my hard drives.

Gene,

Generally, the three people associated with NitrOS-9 are Bill Nobel, Curtis Boyle and Wes Gayle. Those were the names that were in the NitrOS-9 documentation that accompanied the floppy disks sold at fests. There were other contributors, as you pointed out, but the omission was not meant to slight anyone.

I thought I had mentioned Alan DeKok’s contributions to the NitrOS-9 effort, but I don’t recall. He certainly deserved some credit for the later revisions to the OS.

> I'm not yapping because I think I needed an honorable mention, but I do 
> think some of that praise could have been worded "and others". I am 
> reasonably sure there were other volunteers besides myself involved, but at 
> the time we as a group weren't sure we could do it without repercussions 
> from Des Moines so it wasn't publicly discussed as to whom was doing what. 
> IMO if there were others, its long past due they should at least raise a 
> hand and wave to the crowd. I think its safe now. :)
> 
> I have to assume a good word from Boisy may have smoothed the way in that 
> regard, and that we should be giving a bit of credit there for the freedom 
> we have had in this effort.  I won't say it's unique, but OTOH, where are 
> the now community supported upgrades for TOS on my Atari 1040ST-E?  And 
> amigados has been tied up in litigation for decades now.  Nuff said.

I don’t think I had any appreciable influence in “calling off the dogs” per se while I was at Microware. NitrOS-9 was practically ignored by the company, who was by then focused on major consumer markets like interactive TV, as well as their more traditional commercial markets.