[Coco] CoCo OS-9, a short simple explanation

[Steve Strowbridge]

That was very helpful, thanks, have not cracked open OS9 yet, but I feel
more educated now.
On May 16, 2016 7:02 PM, "Barry Nelson" <barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com>
wrote:

>  In response to anyone who is totally new to and doesn't "get" OS-9, I
> would lie to offer these simple insights. OS-9 and NitrOS9 are disk
> operating systems, not a programming language, and is very similar to the
> following other disk operating systems in many respects…
>
> Linux
> MS DOS
> Windows (when using the command line prompt)
>
> Many programming languages are available to write programs under OS-9 and
> NitrOS9, including:
>
> BASIC09
> 6809 assembly
> C
> Pascal
>
> Like Linux, Windows and MS DOS OS-9 manages files and folders, has a
> current directory and an execution path. Like Linux, OS-9 uses the /
> character to separate parts of a path as opposed to the \ used by Windows
> and MS DOS. OS-9 uses the chd command to change the currently active
> folder, in NitrOS9 you can use either chd, or cd exactly like Linux, MS DOS
> and Windows. The execution folder is set by the command chx in OS-9 and
> NitrOS9. These are called "built in" commands. Most other commands you
> might type are searched for in the current execution folder including the
> command dir which displays the contents of a folder. The command pwd
> displays the path to the current working folder, pxd displays the current
> execution folder path. The list command lists the contents of a text file.
> Unlike windows, OS-9 and NitrOS9 do not have "drive letters", instead they
> have device names. Typical device names are listed below…
>
> /d0     Floppy drive 0, the first floppy drive
> /d1     Floppy drive 1
> /sd0    CoCo SDC drive 0
> /sd1    CoCo SDC drive 1
> /x0     DriveWire drive 0
> /x1     DriveWire drive 1
>
> A folder path might look like /d0/cmds, where /d0 indicates the floppy
> drive 0 and /cmds indicates the cmds folder on that drive. Like Windows and
> Linux, OS-9 and NitrOS9 have device drivers that must be installed to use
> different types of devices. To use the floppy drives, the floppy disk
> driver must be installed on the OS-9 or NitrOS9 disk that you booted with.
> Unlike Linux and Windows, however, both commands and device drivers can be
> loaded into memory and installed while the system is running using the load
> command.
>
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>