Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcrware!jejones
From: jejones@mcrware.UUCP (James Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os9
Subject: Re: OS9 books
Summary: not much in the way of 68K books so far, alas...
Message-ID: <733@mcrware.UUCP>
Date: 30 Aug 88 13:15:35 GMT
References: <15602@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Organization: Microware Systems Corp., Des Moines, Ia.
Lines: 62

In article <15602@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, dj@dorsai.cognet.ucla.edu (David J. Wells) writes:
> I would like to know more about OS9.  What good, technical literature is
> available?
>
> Also, where can I get a list of OS9 products on the market (i.e. good
> magazines to browse for ads, or an OS9 product summary)?

I'd better bracket this with disclaimers...the following is purely my very
own opinions, up close and personal, with no correlation with any organization
other than those cells that comprise (or is it "constitute?") my body.

The books I've seen out so far on OS-9 have tended to be on OS-9/6809.  In
fact, there may well be more books on OS-9 in French or Japanese than in
English!  There is always the route of buying a copy of the manuals, though.

Microware also has a hardware and software vendor directory.  You should give
them a call for details.

Magazines?  Well...a few years back I'd have recommended *68 Micro Journal*
strongly.  I can't recommend it strongly any more; though it does have an
OS-9 column, nowadays the magazine is largely a catalog for Southeast Media,
which sells software for OS-9/6809, OS-9/68000, and FLEX and its clone
SK*DOS.  The only other English-language magazine I know of that regularly
covers OS-9 is *Rainbow*, a Tandy Color Computer magazine (so that the cover-
age is essentially all OS-9/6809), but even for 6809 users, one has to decide
whether it's worth buying a magazine mostly filled with illegible spaghetti
BASIC listings of games for the amount of OS-9 coverage therein (not to mention
putting up with occasional ignorant OS-9-bashing).  There may well be others,
though, outside the US.

There is the OS-9 User Group newsletter, of course.  You should consider
joining the UG.  For information, 

	OS-9 User Group
	Suite R-237
	1715 East Fowler Avenue
	Tampa FL 33612 USA

The main mention of OS-9 in the US you'll see aside from the above is in
such magazines as *Electronic Design*; there has recently been a burst of
articles on "UniBridge," a package for cross-development and C source-level
debugging across Ethernet from Unix to OS-9/68000 systems (and on the OS-9
system directly, of course), and you'll see a fair number of references to
VME systems (or Gespac's G-64 bus systems--Gespac, BTW, has a glossy magazine
that has a certain amount of OS-9 coverage; I'm not sure how one goes about
subscribing, though) as running OS-9.

Once one gets out of the US and at least somewhat out from under the IBM
religion, it's easier to find publications that mention OS-9.  The Japanese
OS-9 User Group has a professional-looking (though short) magazine on glossy
paper (though I should not slight the aforementioned User Group newsletter,
*MOTD*, which is looking *very* good thanks to its editor Bill Brady).
Japanese magazines such as *My Computer* and *Interface* evidently refer to
OS-9 a fair amount.

Despite the length of this message, I've certainly not done a thorough search
myself, and I hope that others will fill in gaps I've left, particularly the
active group of OS-9 users in Europe.

(Just a reminder--any opinions here are mine, all mine.)

		James Jones