[Coco] OS-9 observations...

[J Arcane]

I remember being floored as a kid by how crazy flexible the OS-9 terminal
windowing was, but looking back now it does seem rather overkill. Sure it's
common to do stuff like that now on *nix machines, many hardcore Linux and
BSD buffs have huge multi-window TMUX or Screen setups going, or just big
xterms with their own internal panelling. I myself keep no less than 4 IRC
panes going at once with WeeChat on BSD.

But I also have a 1080p display and a modern computer that makes that task
utterly trivial. What use did I really have for such advanced windowing on
my little 80-column 128k CoCo3?

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus) <
retrocanada76 at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I see that kills OS-9 performance is its universality of the terminal.
> Do you make any idea the amount of code is needed to print a simple
> character on screen ?
>
> That's the price for having a terminal that can run on any window, any
> character device, on a rs232 remotely, etc.
>
>
>
>
> Luis Felipe Antoniosi
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Frank Swygert <farna at amc-mag.com> wrote:
>
> > From:"nickma2 at optusnet.com.au"  <nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2014 5:16 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Window Writer for OS-9
> >
> >
> > Ok. Thanks. Another one for the trash by the sounds of it.
> >
> > It's a pity. Applications for OS-9 seem to fall into the... Too slow,
> > too primitive or too difficult to install and run. Sometimes all of
> > these at once.
> >
> > Shame. OS-9 is definately a powerfull OS. I do honestly believe this.
> > It just falls over as far as quality applications and ease of use is
> > concerned.
> >
> > Nick
> > =========================================================
> >
> > For today that is correct, and even "back in the day" it was. OS-9 was
> > written as a robotic control system. It was all command driven and
> expected
> > to be embedded in a controller. It's modular and flexible enough to make
> a
> > desk-top system out of it, but that wasn't the original purpose. Back in
> > the day the problem was limited memory. With limited user space in a 64K
> > machine by the time you wrote a kick-butt program you had no space to use
> > it. Not so bad with games (assuming you could get it all in the user
> > space), but applications had little working space. That's why Frank Hogg
> > heavily promoted FLEX -- until the CoCo3 came along. With 128K (or
> better,
> > 512K!) you had a little room! OS space for drivers and such was still
> > limited, but there was enough working space to make productive programs
> > more usable.
> >
> > The flexibility is a limiting factor though, along with the limited
> system
> > space. Drivers have to be loaded in that limited system space, so you
> can't
> > always have all the drivers you need for a program. The only effective
> way
> > to use OS-9 with several different programs is to create custom boots for
> > each that has the necessary drivers and deletes unneeded drivers so there
> > is enough system room. Having to reboot the computer when you switch
> > programs can be a nuisance, especially if you would like to use the
> > windowing capability of OS-9 and keep more than one program open at a
> time.
> >
> > So it's not a modern OS. It's not running on a modern computer either. If
> > you're running a CoCo you have to realize that the hardware is the
> > limitation, not the OS. OS-9/68K machines don't have the limitations the
> > CoCo does. They have a lot more system space. The limitation for system
> > space is the fact that the 6809 is still an 8 bit microprocessor, and
> the 8
> > bit architecture limits addressable system space. OS-9/68K was expensive
> --
> > it was intended as an industrial system like the original 8-bit OS-9.
> There
> > were of course a few machines made with OS-9/68K, but the cost of the OS
> > was part of why they didn't catch on, that and the fact that they weren't
> > compatible with any of the CoCo OS-9 software, so a new software library
> > would have to be created. Then you're back to square one -- few good
> > applications that weren't very expensive. At least there was no problem
> > with space to load drivers...
> >
> >
> > --
> > Frank Swygert
> > Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
> > www.amc-mag.com
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >
>
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