Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!xanth!mcnc!rti!sas!toebes
From: toebes@sas.UUCP (John Toebes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: OS/9 (Re: IRQ virus (and a personal note to Steve))
Message-ID: <764@sas.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 89 17:59:42 GMT
References: <2141@van-bc.UUCP>
Reply-To: toebes@sas.UUCP (John Toebes)
Organization: SAS Institute Inc, Cary NC
Lines: 40

In article <2141@van-bc.UUCP> lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) writes:
>In <3263@sugar.uu.net>, peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>> Actually, if you can dig up an old CBM Super-Pet (Try high-schools)
>>Wait a second. Doesn't the Pet use a 6502? Last I heard, OS/9 was only
>>for the Motorola 6809 and 68000.
>Well, the Super-PET was a PET plus more. It did have a 6502, which acted just
>like a regular PET, but it also had a 6809, which acted like.. well, like a
>6809. There were all sorts of neat languages available for it too.
>-larry

Just to fill in the population, the SuperPet was basically run more from the
6809 side than the 6502 side.  It came with APL, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol,
Basic (structured), Assembler, and a reasonable editor that was integrated
with all environments.  It had 96K of ram - 32K plus 16 banks of 4K each.
The machine had quite a bit of potential but wasn't really pushed as hard as
it could have been.  I did quite a bit of work on it before I moved to the
Amiga.  Dick Barnes who edits 'The Amigan Apprentice and Journeyman' used to
edit 'The SuperPETA Gazette' which was really the only magazine that supported
the machine.

All in all, the machine was an excellent concept:  Provide all
the languages for free with a bit of hardware including a decent serial
port that could run 19.2K as well as all that memory.  It even had builtin
floating point routines in the rom as well as somewhat of an operating
system.  The biggest problem with it all was that it was never improved
or developed past the initial stages.  Much of the code for the languages
and rom was written by Waterloo with clear evidence of a quick development.
Much of the early code in the roms was basically warmed over 6502 code -
especially the floating point stuff.

Just setting the story straight here.  I still have mine in the closet with
quite a bit of software for it.

--
 |_o_o|\\   John A. Toebes, VIII       usenet:..mcnc!rti!sas!toebes
 |. o.| ||
 | .  | ||  Coordinator of ...
 | o  | ||    The Software Distillery
 |  . |//     USnail: 235 Trillingham Ln, Cary NC 27513
 ======       BBS: (919)-471-6436