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This page has a lot more photos including manuals: https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 The part about the

by Jerry2 7y ago

This page has a lot more photos including manuals: https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 The part about the OS caught my eye: >Commodore chose the Mark-Williams "Coherent" clone for the CBM900 which is roughly UNIX System 7, but with a few twists and less features. >The operating system is delivered on four floopy disks: Low-res and Hi-res boot, and common volume 2 & 3 with more programs. All four floppies contain a filesystem. We have made bit-for-bit images of these floppies, both on the CBM900 harddisk and offline.

smacktoward 7y ago
If you’re interested in Coherent, you can get some background on it and even download the source code here: http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/ http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/ And here’s a 1998 thread from the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers where Dennis Ritchie (!) recounts his experience of being sent by AT&T to evaluate whether Coherent violated their Unix copyrights: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers/_ZaYeY46eb4/5B41Uym6d4QJ https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.compute...
- jcims 7y ago
  Wow never thought I'd hear about this OS again. I still have the original manual and discs in the basement. My dad bought it and tinkered with it on a this huge Epson 386 back in the day...I got to the point of X without a window manager and gave up lol.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Some fun facts to get your head wrapped around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company That's Aaron's dad.
- icedchai 7y ago
  In the early 90's I used to run Coherent on a 386SX. It was my first exposure to a "Unix clones." It had one of the better Unix manuals for the time... very comprehensive. I later moved to Linux probably 1993-ish.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Almost bought it to operate a multiline BBS. The $99 price for a Unix like OS was astonishing. IIRC, my fellow SysOps and I ended up not going that route after contacting the company about the possibility of Coherent running PicoSpan and were told it likely wouldn't fit into the memory space. So we ended up using MajorBBS instead, which worked out fine.
williesleg 7y ago
Aah yes, I remember the days when our hard drives had hand-written defect maps on them. We keyed that into our Unix partitioner so it ignored those bad blocks. So much fun!
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
Funny, I just realized something. Remember the Commodore 64? My brother used to call it CBM64, and his initials are BM, so I thought it was C for Commodore + his initials + 64. And now, looking at CBM900, I got a hint that CBM could have been something else. Quick google search, and I see that it's "Commodore Business Machines", probably inspired by IBM (International Business Machines).

by Jerry2 7y ago

smacktoward 7y ago

If you’re interested in Coherent, you can get some background on it and even download the source code here: http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/ http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/ And here’s a 1998 thread from the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers where Dennis Ritchie (!) recounts his experience of being sent by AT&T to evaluate whether Coherent violated their Unix copyrights: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.computers/_ZaYeY46eb4/5B41Uym6d4QJ https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.folklore.compute...

jcims 7y ago
Wow never thought I'd hear about this OS again. I still have the original manual and discs in the basement. My dad bought it and tinkered with it on a this huge Epson 386 back in the day...I got to the point of X without a window manager and gave up lol.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Some fun facts to get your head wrapped around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Williams_Company That's Aaron's dad.
icedchai 7y ago
In the early 90's I used to run Coherent on a 386SX. It was my first exposure to a "Unix clones." It had one of the better Unix manuals for the time... very comprehensive. I later moved to Linux probably 1993-ish.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Almost bought it to operate a multiline BBS. The $99 price for a Unix like OS was astonishing. IIRC, my fellow SysOps and I ended up not going that route after contacting the company about the possibility of Coherent running PicoSpan and were told it likely wouldn't fit into the memory space. So we ended up using MajorBBS instead, which worked out fine.

williesleg 7y ago

Aah yes, I remember the days when our hard drives had hand-written defect maps on them. We keyed that into our Unix partitioner so it ignored those bad blocks. So much fun!

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

Funny, I just realized something. Remember the Commodore 64? My brother used to call it CBM64, and his initials are BM, so I thought it was C for Commodore + his initials + 64. And now, looking at CBM900, I got a hint that CBM could have been something else. Quick google search, and I see that it's "Commodore Business Machines", probably inspired by IBM (International Business Machines).