OS9 login / shutdown

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Tony Duell wrote:
> > Warning : My knowledge of OS-9 is beased entirely on the 6809 (8 bit) 
> > version, I've never used a 68K version. I suspect some of the things that 
> > I think were 'misisng' on the 6809 version (like shell variables and 
> > wildcards) are present in the stnadard shell of the 68K version. But 
> > anyway...
> > 
> >> To begin to understand it, consider it to be a CP/M clone with
> >> multi-user extensions. List the files in the system directory and most
> > 
> > Internally it's not a bit like CP/M
> 
> More UNIX-like than anything. In fact, some text implies that library calls 
> were kept as close to UNIX as possible to aid porting between the two.

The calls are very unix-like, but the internals of the OS are very 
different. It's much more modular for one thing (device drivers and 
descriptors are sepeare modules which can be loaded from the command 
line, for example).

> According to the flyer, both Acorn and QL versions should come with a word 
> processor, spreadsheet, database, BASIC compiler, C compiler, Pascal compiler, 
> assembler, and graphics kernel.
> 

Having used the 6809 version, the C should be pretty much original K&R, 
the Pascal will be ISO level 0 with some extras (it doesn't quite make 
level 1), and the BASIC should be BASIC-09, which IMHO is the best BASIC 
ever (nicer, even, than BBC BASIC).

> I can only assume they're on the hard drive (which I can't access at present) 
> - but having said that, the flyer talks as though a hard disk was totally 
> optional. Wish I had all the install floppies!

It was certainly possible to run the 8-bit versions from floppies. Two 
drives helped a lot, but it was just about possible on a single-drive 
machine by swapping disks.

-tony