[comp.os.os9] OS-9 on Unix-pc hardware. Could it work?

erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) (07/10/88)

I've been thinking.  What would be the problems with porting OS-9
to the Unix-Pc?  Maybe have a partition of my HD that's set up
for OS-9 (cf. DOS-73 board and hd)?

There are beginning to be a lot of OS-9 systems in the world. Well,
there've always been a lot, but now they're getting noticed.

Why OS-9?  Realtime control, right off the bat.  Multitasking/multiuser,
easer-n-sin to write a driver for *anything* you can hook up to it,
~compatible with unix source (I understand the the 68xxx OS-9 boxes
are really close), it's fast -- really fast, small, and clean

I wouldn't want to try and support a big multi-user system w/ OS-9,
but I'd like to do a lot of other things with it.  In Japan, factories
use it to control robots; I've seen at least one Sun-we-want-you posting
referencing OS-9 programming; etc etc.

So, anyone out there have experience with the OS-9 Port-Pak (or whatever
it's called.  Insta-Port? :-).

Email or post, as you wish.
-- 
Skate UNIX or go home, boogie boy...
     [Obscure joke goes here]
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007
             ..!bellcore!tness1!/

dibble@cs.rochester.edu (Peter C. Dibble) (07/10/88)

When the Unix PC first came out several of us wanted to port OS-9 to it.
It looked like an excellent OS-9 development machine.  We had several problems:
  *  It was expensive.
	 This has been fixed.
  *  It was impossible to get enough hardware information to do the port.
	 This may still be true.  Years ago the problem seemed to be that
	 hardware information was caught between AT&T and Convergent.  On
	 the other hand, I saw a posting that said that convergent would
	 sell their Unix source for the 3B1.  I bet it's expensive, but
	 maybe some OS-9 person out there already has access to it ...
Peter