jejones@ea.UUCP (02/21/85)
[Up against the net, redneck mother...] Gee. I went to UniForum for a day (BIG mistake, Brasilia--it takes all week, believe me) and while I was there, I saw the folks from Motorola Four-Phase Systems. I talked to the fellow there, and said we were interested in a 68010 or 68020 box that ran OS-9 and could run 4.2 if need be. He tells me a bit about their machines and says, "Well, ISOS II is an extended OS-9." "Hmm," says I, "should I ask him if his product has ventricles in the frammistan?" My combined courtesy and timidity got the best of me, though, and I just mentally wrote him off. That is, until today... Today the Four-Phase folks paid me a visit. They left a nice thick stack of stuff. Among this were a couple of sheets that revised my opinion of the guy in Dallas, to wit: One says "Series 2000 Extended BASIC," and it is a nice summary of BASIC09, with the name of the product changed for some reason. The other says "ISOS II Operating System," and while it's not so blatantly a description of what I think it is as the other, it has all the right moves: "HIGHLIGHTS...A Unix(tm)-type OS for desktop computers... file and record lock facilities with deadlock detection..." "ISOS II optimizes main memory utilization by supporting re-entrant and shareable programs. Re-entrant programs allow users to share the same copy of an application program." So--here's the $64*10**n question: just how much of OS-9 is there in ISOS II, how much of the vice is versa, and how compatible are they at, say, the system call level, if the latter makes any sense? The Four-Phase Series 2000 looks like a respectable machine--68010-based, with 6809s on the I/O processor boards, some reasonable-looking software. Maybe a bit limited in terms of RAM (1 Mbyte), but otherwise very respectable. (Added as an afterthought--could it be that ISOS II is OS-9 running on one of the I/O processors, heaven forbid?) Whoever you were in Dallas, I may very well owe you an apology... James Jones