[Coco] Open Letter to those who will be attending the The 24th Annual "Last Chicago CoCoFEST April 25-26, 2015

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 03 April 2015 22:20:34 Boisy Pitre wrote:
> Stephen,
>
> The OS-9 Level 2 Upgrade source search reminds me of the quest for the
> Holy Grail — years and years of rumor and yet still no closer to
> finding it.
>
> I am mystified why there is a continued desire to worship at the altar
> of Kevin Darling. Yes, he did some great things at one time, but now
> he has made it quite clear that he has no time for the CoCo community,
> and that was reiterated tome when I reached out to him on multiple
> occasions for an interview for the CoCo book.
>
> Why anyone would continue to go to him on bended knee is beyond me.
> Brother Jeremy’s persistence did yield a couple of boot disks (sans
> source), but that’s probably the best it will get. That’s despite the
> rumor that Kevin’s hard drive, which contains the source, is
> supposedly in storage somewhere in Denver. If true, by this point in
> time, the platters are probably demagnetized.
>
> If Kevin had any desire to give the sources out, he would have done so
> years ago. He doesn’t care about the source or about getting it out to
> you or anyone else.
>
> Beyond that, I’m not sure what value the sources would have.
> Significant work has been done to disassemble OS-9, and the NitrOS-9
> Project is result. If its resizable, movable windows that everyone
> wants, those modules could be disassembled and commented with some
> work (I’m pretty sure that these modules are in the NitOS-9 Project
> repository). If the effort expended to get Kevin’s hard drive had been
> instead focused on disassembling these modules, there would be no need
> to go hat in hand to Kevin Darling.
>
> Sorry if this comes off as cynical, but I’m not sure how else to spin
> it.

I am just as cynical in re Kevin D.  His desire to not help the os9 crowd 
was never more evidenced than when he gave us a new rbf.mn as 
a "Christmas present".  The real "present" was that he had excised ALL 
the code used to handle multiple sector "clusters", limiting os9 forever 
to a maximum drive capacity of 128 mebibytes. This at the time went 
un-noticed because no one us that I know of had a hard drive big enough 
to need it.  But in dissing it to make a 6309 version, there were some 
hints and oddities, so I also dissed the original distribution disk 
version.  So what I put back into the pot for us to use was not based on 
Kevins new version, but on the original with a couple patches with all 
that cluster code intact and tested to the 9's.  So now we can use any 
hard drive we have an interface for.  No thanks to Kevin, I think he did 
it intentionally.

> > On Apr 3, 2015, at 8:47 PM, Stephen H. Fischer
> > <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > Br. Jeremy who AFAIK is in England across the pond received Kevin
> > Darlings CoCo 3 system with the never released by Tandy new version
> > of OS-9 Level-II.
> >
> > He sold this new version and I was one of the persons who purchased
> > it.
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The computer's hard drive contained the source code for the never
> > released by Tandy new version of OS-9 Level-II.
> >
> > I also believe that the source code for other parts of OS-9 are on
> > this hard drive including the original shell and shellplus source
> > code and lots more. Maybe ALL of OS-9's source code is on that hard
> > drive as Kevin was the leader of the project that was an official
> > Tandy one.
> >
> > I was on Delphi and patches to OS-9 were uploaded, utilities and so
> > on. But usually not the source.
> >
> > I have no proof but IMHO CI$ had the source uploaded for most of
> > this work. Kevin was on CI$.
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > We all would benefit if Kevin Darlings system could be located and
> > obtained for the community. A bounty like the one collected for Jeff
> > Vavasour to write the CoCo 3 emulator I am sure Br. Jeremy would
> > welcome in exchange for Kevin's Computer.
> >
> > I should have written this letter years ago just like I should have
> > communicated with Little John for a copy of the ~ 120 GB that he
> > offered. (The CoCoFest was soon to start and I decided to wait after
> > it had occurred. Sadly it was too late in his short life.) The offer
> > was in one of the Glenside's newsletters.
> >
> > There is one other person that may have sources that we would
> > welcome, but he and I disagreed and I am not the person to approach
> > him. He is the owner of one of our important websites but has not
> > posted for years now. You all know that I am not the best person to
> > try and do these tasks.
> >
> > Hopefully others will attempt these tasks.
> >
> > Stephen H. Fischer
> >
> >
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>