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From: connery@bnrmtv.UUCP (Glenn Connery)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k,net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: OS9 on Amiga
Message-ID: <167@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Sep-85 12:55:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: bnrmtv.167
Posted: Fri Sep 13 12:55:17 1985
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> > Actually, I'm surprised that the same thought didn't occur to the
> > developers of either (both) of the amiga or the 520ST.  It would seem that
> > 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.  
> 
> The Amiga does run a custom operating system, but the ST runs GEMDOS which
> is available on more than just the ST (Northern Telcom has announced it is
> using it, others have licensed it but have not announced their product yet).
> DRI has Concurrent DOS almost finished, and GEM can sit on top of that for
> multitasking operation...

Are you suggesting that GEM and Concurrent DOS can be used together on the
IBM PC?  Given that Concurrent DOS takes 180K of memory, and that you must
set up a partition with at least 220K to run GEM Desktop, you can barely
run two copies of GEM Desktop in a fully loaded IBM PC.  Since the 220K
figure grows to 256K or greater to run actual applications under GEM, like
GEM Draw, you can see why I am skeptical...  Given that IBM has (a) just
signed a working agreement with Microsoft, (b) IBM has retracted its
original statement about selling GEM and ConcDos, (c) Microsoft has released
a "fully-functional" DOS 4.0 to OEMs, do you really want to suggest that
the presence of ConcDos on the IBM PC matters one iota?

...Glenn