Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lsuc.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!jimomura From: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga,net.micro.cbm Subject: Re: Welcome! Message-ID: <798@lsuc.UUCP> Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 09:10:15 EDT Article-I.D.: lsuc.798 Posted: Thu Sep 19 09:10:15 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 10:07:55 EDT References: <511@petrus.UUCP> <974@druxo.UUCP> <575@sftig.UUCP> Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) Organization: Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto Lines: 53 Summary: OS-9 fairly priced In article <575@sftig.UUCP> rbt@sftig.UUCP (R.Thomas) writes: > [Re: Amiga and 520ST] >OS9/68K would be an ideal substrate for the 'visual/mac-type' user >interface that they provide. Does anybody know why they decided to "go >their own way" and develop custom OS's for their machines. Are the OS9 >developers so unreasonable about relicensing that this was impossible? >Or is there something about OS9 that makes this less sensible than I think >it is? > >Rick Thomas >ihnp4!attunix!rbt The cost of licensing OS-9 isn't unreasonably high. If you check around, you'll find that it's generally licenced for about $100.00 U.S. The Shack is able to sell it for as little as $70.00 Canadian. There's no doubt that you could probably negotiate roughly the same cost as Microsoft charges for 'Mess-DOS' (nice term coined by a Compuserve OS-9'er). The only downside is that BASIC09 might cost a bit. On the otherhand, the Helix QuadraTerm (4 port OS-9, 68008, 1/2 meg. RAM, 10 Meg. Hard, 1 80 track floppy, OS-9 68K, BASIC09, Stylograph word- processor, DynaCalc Spreadsheet, mail merge, spelling checker all *included*) sells for $2695.00 US. You can add a cheap smart term for as little as $500.00 Canadian (a very good term at that) and come out way ahead of the Amiga, the ST520 or *any* legal or even illegal PC-Clone. Note that all this software is time-tested and proven! Why wasn't it done? Frankly, I intend to find out in detail and report in on BIX (I'm the moderator of the 'os.9' conference on the Byte Information eXchange). I expect that they just didn't want to pay anybody *anything* for their main system software. The GEM system was a must for Atari, in order to beat the Amiga onto the market. If Tramiel had the time, I think he would have tried to do that much in house as well. The Amiga Software was not begun by Commodore. A certain amount was produced by the original designers of the Amiga. I don't have all the details in that regard either. Between the two, my impression is that the current Atari ST5200 would be the easier of the two to set up OS-9 on. The Amiga's hardware interface is too dependant on it's current system to interface to OS-9 and still use it to it's maximum potential. In short, you'd end up keeping most of the original software and running OS-9 in the space remaining, which wouldn't be much. To create a whole new optimized set of drivers would be, in this case substantially less trivial. Not impossible mind you, but you wouldn't be able to do a lot of the neato graphics & sound stuff as a coherent production as easily for quite a while. Cheers! -- Jim O. -- James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura