[Coco] OS-9 observations...

[L. Curtis Boyle]

Bill and I used it all the time at work. We were driving 8 RS-232 terminals, and 3 high speed line printers at the same time (with 3 different jobs on each). Windowing in NitrOS9 was invaluable for this.

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



> On Nov 13, 2014, at 12:45 PM, J Arcane <jarcane at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
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