5 ms·

EmuTOS, a free operating system for Atari computers

76 points by walkingolof 8y ago

DominoTree 8y ago
I knew this existed but had no idea it was still under pretty active development. How cool!
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  Very active. Getting close to 1.0, and pretty much at parity and beyond the original TOS.
sys_64738 8y ago
Tramiel Operation System (TOS) named. after the legendary computer icon, Jack Tramiel.
- walkingolof 8y ago
  A trio of Jack Tramiel profiles by Kim Justice: JACK ATTACK: The Story of Jack Tramiel at Commodore, Part 1 - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd9kmBn0M9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd9kmBn0M9k Jack Tramiel Part 2: The Commodore 64 vs The TI-99/4A and the American Computer Crash - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJqocxoOBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJqocxoOBA The Last Stand of Jack Tramiel: The Atari ST vs The Commodore Amiga - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bMJt65Jm5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bMJt65Jm5E
cmrdporcupine 8y ago
For those unfamiliar, this is a full open source (GPL) re-implementation of the original Atari ST (16/32 68000 system) operating system. Here's the long form: The Atari ST's operating system ("TOS") was forked from Digital Research's 'GEMDOS' (a kind of CP/M 68k / MS-DOS alike disk operating system) along with 'GEM' (Graphic Environment Manager) which consisted of a device-independent graphics subsystem ('VDI') and a windowing system / application toolkit ('AES' application environment services). Atari was given a license from DR back in 1984, and effectively did their own port and forked from the mainline. The story of how that all went down is chronicled in an excellent series of blog posts by an original participant here: http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=995 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=995 and http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000 Note that this is 'Atari Corp', which was a company owned by Jack Tramiel after he quit Commodore. Not Atari Inc, which was the company responsible for Pong, the Atari 2600, and the original Atari 8-bit computers. GEM was the brainchild of Lee Jay Lorenzen, who had worked on the Xerox Star project and who had advocated at Xerox for getting some of those concepts onto lower end PC-class machines. He joined DR in the early 80s and headed up the GEM project to work on that. He later left DR to start Ventura Publisher, an excellent DTP package which was built on GEM. Digital Research went on to develop GEM on the x86 on a separate branch from the Atari version. They were forced by an Apple lawsuit to make modifications to it to make it less Mac-like. Atari's branch was exempted from this. Atari Corp eventually packed it in, with their assets spread around like ashes, and the IP around their fork of GEM/GEMDOS has been lost to the world (well the source has been leaked but not legally). However after a series of acquisitions, DR's original IP -- including GEM, GEMDOS, CP/M 68k, etc. was open sourced under the GPL. EmuTOS was created (many moons ago) from the original DR sources in order to have open source ROMs for ST emulators, effectively doing again what the team at Atari did back in the 80s: porting to the 68k Atari ST platform. But since then it's grown to be a full alternative to Atari's ROMs that works on more than just emulators. In addition to being basically full feature (and quirk) parity with Atari's TOS, it also includes a full hard disk driver which is something Atari's never included without an add-on. This includes support for IDE drives for modern devices like compact flash cards, etc. It also has been ported to and runs well on other 68k and Coldfire platforms, and runs well on the Amiga, on the Firebee (a modern Coldfire based Atari-like machine), and headless on Coldfire evaluation boards. It's also been recently ported to the 'Kiwi' 68008 DIY microcomputer.
- rjsw 8y ago
  > ... it also includes a full hard disk driver which is something Atari's never included without an add-on. I don't remember having to do anything to use a hard disk with any of the official versions of TOS. I have an SH204 "shoebox" HD from the initial developer offer.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    A driver needs to be installed onto the boot sector of the disk itself, I believe. Usually ICD, AHDI, or HDdriver (still maintained).
  - amiga-workbench 8y ago
    Those ACSI cables are a massive pain in the ass to lay your hands on nowadays, the D-Sub connectors haven't been manufactured in the necessary size for ages.
    - tom_ 8y ago
      Soembody did a production run a couple of years ago: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-...
      - amiga-workbench 8y ago
        Yeah, I managed to grab the last pair off eBay.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  I distinctly remember my ST having a scsi port (or some sluggish version thereof). The harddrive was a stand-alone box with its own power supply and a small D connector cable connecting the two.
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
jhallenworld 8y ago
So frustrating with Atari.. they were only a little behind the Apple Macintosh (but with color!). They almost made the IBM PC: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-almost-was-atari-ibm-pc https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-...
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  Different Atari tho. Atari Inc (that made the A8 machines you link to here) and Atari Corp were two different companies. The latter headed by Jack Tramiel with a few assets purchased from the former.
  - walkingolof 8y ago
    Those assets included the A400/800, which was designed by Jay Miner, same guy that went on designing the Amiga that Commodore bought
    - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      Yeah and those assets also potentially included rights to the Amiga Loraine IP itself, depending on who you talk to. Hence the lawsuit that ensued.

76 points by walkingolof 8y ago

DominoTree 8y ago

I knew this existed but had no idea it was still under pretty active development. How cool!

cmrdporcupine 8y ago
Very active. Getting close to 1.0, and pretty much at parity and beyond the original TOS.

sys_64738 8y ago

Tramiel Operation System (TOS) named. after the legendary computer icon, Jack Tramiel.

walkingolof 8y ago
A trio of Jack Tramiel profiles by Kim Justice: JACK ATTACK: The Story of Jack Tramiel at Commodore, Part 1 - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd9kmBn0M9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd9kmBn0M9k Jack Tramiel Part 2: The Commodore 64 vs The TI-99/4A and the American Computer Crash - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJqocxoOBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJqocxoOBA The Last Stand of Jack Tramiel: The Atari ST vs The Commodore Amiga - Kim Justice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bMJt65Jm5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bMJt65Jm5E

cmrdporcupine 8y ago

For those unfamiliar, this is a full open source (GPL) re-implementation of the original Atari ST (16/32 68000 system) operating system. Here's the long form: The Atari ST's operating system ("TOS") was forked from Digital Research's 'GEMDOS' (a kind of CP/M 68k / MS-DOS alike disk operating system) along with 'GEM' (Graphic Environment Manager) which consisted of a device-independent graphics subsystem ('VDI') and a windowing system / application toolkit ('AES' application environment services). Atari was given a license from DR back in 1984, and effectively did their own port and forked from the mainline. The story of how that all went down is chronicled in an excellent series of blog posts by an original participant here: http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=995 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=995 and http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000 http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1000 Note that this is 'Atari Corp', which was a company owned by Jack Tramiel after he quit Commodore. Not Atari Inc, which was the company responsible for Pong, the Atari 2600, and the original Atari 8-bit computers. GEM was the brainchild of Lee Jay Lorenzen, who had worked on the Xerox Star project and who had advocated at Xerox for getting some of those concepts onto lower end PC-class machines. He joined DR in the early 80s and headed up the GEM project to work on that. He later left DR to start Ventura Publisher, an excellent DTP package which was built on GEM. Digital Research went on to develop GEM on the x86 on a separate branch from the Atari version. They were forced by an Apple lawsuit to make modifications to it to make it less Mac-like. Atari's branch was exempted from this. Atari Corp eventually packed it in, with their assets spread around like ashes, and the IP around their fork of GEM/GEMDOS has been lost to the world (well the source has been leaked but not legally). However after a series of acquisitions, DR's original IP -- including GEM, GEMDOS, CP/M 68k, etc. was open sourced under the GPL. EmuTOS was created (many moons ago) from the original DR sources in order to have open source ROMs for ST emulators, effectively doing again what the team at Atari did back in the 80s: porting to the 68k Atari ST platform. But since then it's grown to be a full alternative to Atari's ROMs that works on more than just emulators. In addition to being basically full feature (and quirk) parity with Atari's TOS, it also includes a full hard disk driver which is something Atari's never included without an add-on. This includes support for IDE drives for modern devices like compact flash cards, etc. It also has been ported to and runs well on other 68k and Coldfire platforms, and runs well on the Amiga, on the Firebee (a modern Coldfire based Atari-like machine), and headless on Coldfire evaluation boards. It's also been recently ported to the 'Kiwi' 68008 DIY microcomputer.

rjsw 8y ago
> ... it also includes a full hard disk driver which is something Atari's never included without an add-on. I don't remember having to do anything to use a hard disk with any of the official versions of TOS. I have an SH204 "shoebox" HD from the initial developer offer.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago
  A driver needs to be installed onto the boot sector of the disk itself, I believe. Usually ICD, AHDI, or HDdriver (still maintained).
- amiga-workbench 8y ago
  Those ACSI cables are a massive pain in the ass to lay your hands on nowadays, the D-Sub connectors haven't been manufactured in the necessary size for ages.
  - tom_ 8y ago
    Soembody did a production run a couple of years ago: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-...
    - amiga-workbench 8y ago
      Yeah, I managed to grab the last pair off eBay.
jacquesm 8y ago
I distinctly remember my ST having a scsi port (or some sluggish version thereof). The harddrive was a stand-alone box with its own power supply and a small D connector cable connecting the two.
- cmrdporcupine 8y ago

jhallenworld 8y ago

So frustrating with Atari.. they were only a little behind the Apple Macintosh (but with color!). They almost made the IBM PC: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-almost-was-atari-ibm-pc https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/7135/the-...

cmrdporcupine 8y ago
Different Atari tho. Atari Inc (that made the A8 machines you link to here) and Atari Corp were two different companies. The latter headed by Jack Tramiel with a few assets purchased from the former.
- walkingolof 8y ago
  Those assets included the A400/800, which was designed by Jay Miner, same guy that went on designing the Amiga that Commodore bought
  - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
    Yeah and those assets also potentially included rights to the Amiga Loraine IP itself, depending on who you talk to. Hence the lawsuit that ensued.