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From: jag2@nvuxg.UUCP (J A Gardina)
Newsgroups: net.micro.6809
Subject: Re: Introductory Info for OS/9 wanted
Message-ID: <270@nvuxg.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Mar-86 17:40:49 EST
Article-I.D.: nvuxg.270
Posted: Mon Mar  3 17:40:49 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 05:42:53 EST
References: <469@watdragon.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ
Lines: 57


Graham Wilson asks;

>
>- With the basic OS/9 package, is a full-screen editor (like vi) included?
>- How complete is the C-compiler (anything left out)?

I don't yet have either of these (yet). I believe there is no screen editor
included in Basic-O9 but am sure any good text editor will work.
I am equally sure that something must be left out of the C compiler.

>- How close to Unix is OS/9?

Here is where I feel qualified to respond. Keep in mind that OS-9 only claims
to be Unix-like. I think they did a fine job in respect to the fundamental
philosophy of the operating system. Unified I/O, multitasking, multi-user etc.

As far as the commands and there associated syntax, not very much similarity.
The equivlalent of "ls -l" is "dir e" and "ps -af" is "procs". You might change
the names of some commands to try to get close but you would have to re-write
them to really duplicate them. There is a set of commands available that
claims to be very similar. Maybe someone has them and will respond.

>- I have one disk drive.  Is that enough?  Is there a substantial
>  improvement with two disk drives?

I have two floppies and I'm already considering a hard disk. I may be
spoiled at work but I never can have enough storage. Unless you want to
be stuck juggling floppies for hours on end you need at least two drives.

>- Are there any nroff/troff-like packages available?  Preferably they would 
>  take advantage of dot-addressable printers (to get a multitude of fonts
>  and print sizes - I have a DMP-105).

There is a package that claims to be nroff compatible. Again if someone
could respond.

>- What software is currently in demand (i.e. stuff which I could write to
>  help pay for OS/9)?

To start the endless list you could write a vt100 terminal emulator that
does half the tasks that you'd expect any terminal emulator to do. A decent
screen editor (as VI like as possible) and anything that runs on disk
basic should be ported over to OS-9. I don't plan on ever using the basic
dos unless I absolutely have to. 
 


	I posted this since I pose some questions that I'd like to hear
answers to. 

				Joe Gardina 
				Bell Communications Research
				Navesink, NJ
				ihnp4!nvuxg!jag2
				(201)758-5486