[Coco] [CoCo] NitrOS-9 on real CoCo (Was DriveWire 4)

[James Ross]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2018 13:34:12 +0000
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm interested in going even further and I may be able to try it anyway.
> I want to re-write it in C (it might be fun to try Ada as well, but would
> definitely not be as efficient and Ada compilers are rarer) so that it can
> be ported to other architectures. NitrOS11 on a PDP-11 anyone? 😊

Yes! I agree w/ that idea.  

C would probably be the most practical/ideal.  

But, I know what you mean about Ada ... I had to work w/ it way back when I had a job working for a military contractor.  Back then I did not like Ada.  But these days, I think I might (learn to) appreciate the language and what they were attempting to do when they created the language.

I've also thought it might be cool to do it in Java or C# (stripped of the standard libraries that come w/ those languages) but you would want to compile to the native CPU ahead of time ... so, that would be quite an obstacle/challenge.

But yes... NitrOS-9 native on bare-metal Intel / ARM / PowerPC / 68k architectures would be quite a lot of fun and bring back some of the excitement I felt w/ OS-9 on the CoCo3.

Care would need to be taken so that Microware LLP could not sue for infringement. Just how much of the current NitrOS-9 is a clean re-write? I don't know. But, a re-design from scratch using just the top-level documented architectural API (which OS-9 is really a paired down subset of a UNIX OS anyway) and commands would be necessary.   

Honestly, from a retro hobby perspective, I prefer to play with DECB (aka RS-DOS) on the CoCo.  I don't judge anyone who still gets a kick out of OS-9 on the CoCo (and it deserves great respect for what it was and what it could do back in the day) -- now, on more modern equipment... yes it would bring back that feeling of new territory I got back in the day when first using and learning OS-9.  

Pie-in-sky idea --> NitrOS-9 Phone OS.  I think you can put custom ROMS in some Android phones? 

James