Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!att!ihlpl!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os9
Subject: Re: os9 and Unix(r) OSes
Summary: Expensive for small systems
Message-ID: <7069@ihlpl.ATT.COM>
Date: 6 Oct 88 16:14:51 GMT
References: <709@umbio.MIAMI.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 33

Your question could be answered separately for two groups:
those making computer systems (like the ST) where the user works directly
with the chosen OS, and embedded control processors for industry
and gadgets where the end user never sees the OS at all.
The latter has long been OS9's main bailiwick, both for 6809 and
68K.  For every Coco or SS-50 (Gimix, Hleix, SSB) system, there
are probably a dozen boards buried in a factory floor somewhere.
The CD-ROM systems, should they ever appear, are another example.

A friend here needed an embedded OS for a 68000-based controller
board.  No disks, just ROMs.  Real time.  So he didn't
even consider U**X.  I convinced him to look into OS9, and he
agreed it was perfect for the job.  Until he looked at costs.

Now Microware wanted a royalty of $50 per board, which is not
unreasonable.  But they also wanted something like $6000 for the
software development system, plus more for a hardware setup
to run it on (unlike Coco or ST, his board couldn't possibly support
editing and compiling).  Since he wasn't planning a really big
production run of his board, the cost of all this development stuff
came to significantly more per board than the royalty.
So he ended up using XINU I think.

Maybe an ST setup[ could have been used, for under $2000 total,
tho OSK/ST wasn't too stable at that time.
But OSK seems to be economical only if you're either going
to make a lot of one system, or develop lots of different systems
with that expensive development system.

My feeling at the time was that Microware should lease the development
system cheap, or give it away at cost, to encourage more OS9 usage
and make their bread & butter on the royalties.
But then what do I know about aggressive marketing?