Slashdot Mirror

We're getting off topic here, but I couldn't resist a Google search for OS 9. It turns out that the old CoCos are still out there kicking:

http://www.coco3.com/

There's even a company still making a living off of OS9:

http://www.microware.com/

And a wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9

(Yeah, I know I should've made working links. I'm feeling lazy today. :) )

As far as whether there was anything else interesting you could do with OS-9, the answer is "yes" - if you had an assembler, a C compiler or BASIC-09, plus Multi-Vue (windowing). I mean, look at (just a few) of the CoCo 3 games that were made for OS-9: Koronis Rift, Sub Battle (IIRC), King's Quest III - unfortunately, only the really "hardcore" users of the CoCo ever went there...

I don't think it had so much to do with the complexity of OS-9 vs DECB, but rather the expense. Back in the day, to have a reasonable OS-9 system on the CoCo 3 required at minimum 512K and two floppy drives - an easy outlay of well over $500.00, and that is just for hardware. The license costs for OS-9, Multi-Vue, and BASIC-09 could easily bring that total to over $1000.00. If you wanted to get the best value of OS-9, you wanted to either upgrade RAM to 1 or 2 MB with third-party boards (Tandy only officially supported 512K), and add a hard drive (which back then, a 10-20 MB drive was insanely priced). Just too much money for what was, really, a hobby system.

Today, it has gotten much cheaper, but unfortunately there isn't any demand - the CoCo 3 has long been discontinued, and nobody has made a replacement (not that one is really needed). Nostalgic owners of the CoCo, people who want to play the old games, and those who have just a basic few needs for a computer - can emulate the CoCo 2 and 3 almost perfectly via a variety of emulators, most notable of which is the MESS system (put MESS and MAME on a fairly recent PC with TV-Out, and enough ROM images, and you can the dream system of yesteryear). OS-9 has been "replicated" via NitrOS9 (and even made better in some respects), though there isn't a replacement (AFAIK) for Multi-Vue. It will even run on original hardware (if you have it or can find it). Also, for more goodness, recent hardware and peripherals continue to be made - see the Cloud-9 site. I have also heard "rumblings" that a USB interface is in the works as well. Lastly, for other goodness, there is Sockmaster's site (he is the CoCo 3 graphics wizard) and the CoCo3.com site.

Is the CoCo dead? Yes and no. I would say it "languishes" along much like the C=64, Apple IIe, Amiga and a ton of other "old" machines. It will probably have a following for a long while. I intend to keep mine running and I play with it now and again. I have already set up an emulation box and have transferred all (well, a vast majority - some were unreadable) of my old floppies to CD. I was also instrumental in helping to get Diecom's "Gates of Delerium" (a clone of Ultima) restored and running under emulation (I was like one of seeming three people who owned it, and my copy was degrading), as well as helping to get Dave Dies to formally release the old software of Diecom to public domain (score another point for abandonware rescue!). Unfortunately, no one has yet put the ZIP file of GofD up - I have tried to get Curtis Boyle to do it, sent it to him with documentation from Dave Dies about the release - but he hasn't put it up yet (though he has a great repository of old CoCo software)...

Maybe you *should* pull that CoCo down from the attic, if you still have it. Dust it off (clean it good inside and out before powering it up if it has been sitting long - be careful with the keyboard ribbon cable connection, though, as you take the case apart), do some searching on the internet (there are a lot of CoCo and CoCo emulation sites), then if you are interested, let me know and I will point you to the CoCo mailing list (unless you find it yourself - I think you can get to it from the CoCo3.com site). It is a fun list, with a great

Rainbow Magazine used to ship with a floppy record every once in a while.

It had the same code on it that was listed in the magazine in text, but the record came without the typing and type-o-ing.

Rainbow Magazine was a magazine with content based around the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer.

...the Dragon 32 (a Welsh-made near-clone of the Tandy TRS-80)...

The Tano Dragon was not a near-clone of the Z-80-based TRS-80; it was a near-clone of the Tandy Color Computer which used the Motorola 6809, the best microprocessor of its era.

If you miss it, you should come hang out with folks who still use it...next year is either the thirteenth annual "Last" Chicago CoCoFest. Hardware and software is still being made for the beast; check out Cloud-9. I use a Cloud-9 SCSI cartridge, and have moved from the 30 Mbyte RLL hard drive that seemed so wonderful when I first got it to a SCSI Zip drive. Cloud-9 has CoCo 3s still in the box for sale, and of course there are CoCo emulators out there. Take a look at the Tandy Color Computer Resource Site for more links and info.

16K? Really? Did someone steal the other 112K?

(I think you're thinking of the Coco 2, which came with 16K; the Coco 3 came with a minimum of 128K, and was expandable to 512K: plenty for a project like this, I think!)