10 ms·

Commodore 900: Unix-like workstation/server that was eclipsed by Amiga (2020)

119 points by indigodaddy 5y ago

EvanAnderson 5y ago
HN discusson re: the Coherent OS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200902
snuci 5y ago
Not to be forgotten, Amiga's AMIX was a proper port of System V Release 4 on the Amiga 2500UX and 3000UX. Here it is running on the Amiga 2500UX: https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A2500UX.jpg https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A2500U...
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
This machine actually could be in many ways considered a predecessor to the Atari ST rather than the Amiga. Shiraz Shivji (one of the designers of the C64 and eventually director of engineering at Commodore) worked on it and then left to join the new Atari Corp with Jack Tramiel where he was the chief designer of the Atari ST hardware. In fact there was a lawsuit accusing him of stealing IP from the CBM900 (he was acquitted.)
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  The whole situation with Jack Tramiel leaving Commodore, acquiring Atari, Commodore staff following Jack to Atari, the Amiga Corporation[1] loan from Atari pre-Tramiel, subsequent repayment under Tramiel, and acquisition by post-Tramiel Commodore reads like fiction. It's an amazing story to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation
  - Zenst 5y ago
    Oh there are a few documentary's that cover it and was a a good one saw recently that encompassed all this - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5706894/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5706894/ do recommend that one.
    - foresto 5y ago
      The documentary is available here: https://archive.org/details/8bit_Generation_The_Commodore_Wars https://archive.org/details/8bit_Generation_The_Commodore_Wa... Following the "by Commodore" link on that page leads to some other interesting archives as well, including an AmigaDOS manual.
- alexisread 5y ago
  Looking at the specs and focus, out of interest, what would have be taken from the C900 over to the ST? Different CPU, board and bus, graphics on a plugin card, different OS, different market focus and pricepoint. I can't see anything there apart from Shivji that's common. I'm guessing that this was a countersuit to delay Atari after they sued Commodore for 'stealing' the Amiga, thereby delaying the Amiga. As far as OS goes, ironically MultiTos is POSIX compatible. Had Atari stuck it out, it might have ended up similar to OSX in that you could cross-compile UNIX apps to MultiTos to use with a standard UI (GEM).
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Yeah for sure there's little in common and I'm sure it was just corporate legal hostility. But I'm sure the general experience of developing a 16-bit machine was educational. And I'm sure the choice to go with the 68000 (or NS32k which they also evaluated at first at Atari) was likely informed by the annoyance of having fiddled with the Z8000's awkward segmented architecture. Re: POSIX, we Atari users were already crosscompiling things to MiNT (that MultiTOS was based on) back then before MultiTOS came out. In 1990/1991 I ran a setup (off floppies!) that had a bash shell, uucp, nn, etc all set up. Friends of mine with larger hard drives and TTs were using GCC and so on. This was all just before Linux came out and before I moved to a 486, which I only did because Linux was an option there. Eric R Smith was the author of MiNT and was hired by Atari in their latter days to work on TOS and make his work "official." Sort of a last gasp effort after neglecting TOS for years, and the last few OS releases for the Falcon and TT were actually pretty compelling and competitive in some ways with what was on the Mac, etc.. Later, MiNT was all open sourced under GPL as FreeMiNT and it's still very actively developed today. You can set up a whole open source Unix-like environment today on FreeMiNT + EmuTOS complete with bash, login, initd, etc. RPM package management, whole thing.
    - marktangotango 5y ago
      > informed by the annoyance of having fiddled with the Z8000's awkward segmented architecture. That's interesting, I was under the impression that Z8000 uptake was hindered due to bugs in it's implementation, do you have any references about this segmented architecture?
- eschaton 5y ago
  Acquitted only applies to criminal charges. Since this was a civil and not criminal matter, you’d just say that Shivji won (or Commodore lost) the lawsuit.
bullen 5y ago
I bought an Amiga 1200 yesterday for 300EUR. I had a new transparent case for it since a while back, time to fill that case! I also hoarded breadbins for a while with RR-Net and Nunchuk64 + NES classic controllers, so I definitely have the Commodore disease! The first open successful computer; the last being the Raspberry 4, for eternity probably... Q.E.D.
- jacques-noris 5y ago
  >The first open successful computer I love the C64, but the first was probably the Apple II
  - bullen 5y ago
    The Apple 2 was a prototype for the C64. You have to look at the video and audio: the SID is still to our day one of the best analog 8-bit generation synth chips, the VIC-II pushed 8-bit graphics to their logical extreme. NES and SMS both had separate video chips that where not programmable from the CPU or shared the RAM in the same manner. Also the C64 had software that you could copy! Finally the C64 has more releases today than the PC, the Apple 2 has maybe one release every 2 years: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk Maybe I should have added "with audio/visual quality".
nix23 5y ago
If one is interested you can try Confluence as a VM...and btw it's opensource now: https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/#vbox https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/#vbox https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/ https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/ http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manpage.php?contents http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manpage.php?contents http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php
reaperducer 5y ago
Unrelated to the post, but since this thread is likely to attract a bunch of Commodore enthusiasts, I'll mention here that a Commodore 64-DX/C-65 popped up on fleaBay a few days ago. Unfortunately, it's in kinda rough shape, and the starting bid is $15,000. I don't think he'll get any bidders at that price.
- rsync 5y ago
  Huh. I have a very nice 64-DX/C-65 on a shelf in the lab. I also have a factory sealed, brand-new-in-box, Sun Sparcstation 20 :)
jamesdco 5y ago
Enjoyed reading this, nothing like a trip down the memory lane
clan 5y ago
We have got one of those as well for those interested in more details. https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 The boot-roms of the CBM900 has been reverse-engineered in the PyReveng3 project: https://github.com/bsdphk/PyReveng3/tree/master/examples/CBM900 https://github.com/bsdphk/PyReveng3/tree/master/examples/CBM...
theodric 5y ago
I remember when one of these appeared on eBay, and still regret not buying it!
- jamesdco 5y ago
  same here :)
jamesdco 5y ago
This is quite an interesting read for the retro game enthusiasts: https://pikuma.com/blog/game-console-history-for-programmers https://pikuma.com/blog/game-console-history-for-programmers
- retrocoder 5y ago
  Great read!
lproven 5y ago
Discussion about the same machine in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666860
rbanffy 5y ago
Past the boot, where it used a VGA/EGA/MDA-like font, the terminal font looks remarkably similar to Sun's console font. I love it! BTW, if the Amiga came out with a Unix-like OS from the start (such as Coherent), it'd have been a game changer. With some (a lot, really) luck we could be all be running Unixes on different CPUs instead of Windows on x86's... I also like that cursor keys are closer to where the mouse uses to be (for the right-handed, at least)
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > BTW, if the Amiga came out with a Unix-like OS from the start (such as Coherent), it'd have been a game changer. The first versions of the Amiga ran on the MC68000 processor which could not support a MMU, so no Unix there. AIUI, this became first possible with the MC68010, which however was quite uncommon early on.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    Microsoft sold Xenix for the 68000, I wonder how that worked given the often mentioned unix problem caused by inability of the processor to recover from bus faults. As for a MMU, I guess it's not a given that Unix requires paged virtual memory. Traditionally whole processes were swapped in and out.
    - my123 5y ago
      Xenix was also sold for the 8086.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        I learned C on a Unix-like OS, QNX, running on a 640K 8088 PC clone. It booted from a 360K floppy and had, in those 360K, a shell, vi and a C compiler.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        I still miss QNX. Rock solid, super responsive, very tight and a neat model to build scalable applications.
rbanffy 5y ago
Another interesting Z-8000-based machine (and this one was actually produced and sold) is the Olivetti M-20. It's chunky, but I really like it's monolithic design. It says "serious computer" all over it. If anyone has a spare one, my birthday is in March.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  Also the East German P8000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P8000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P8000), unfortunately(?) the "higher-ups" then decided to hop on the x86 train not much later. PS: the conversion from East German Mark to Deutsche Mark doesn't make much sense on that Wikipedia page (the conversion factor seems to be inverted).
  - pram 5y ago
    I'm impressed they had so many OS clones, even UNIX!

119 points by indigodaddy 5y ago

HN discusson re: the Coherent OS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200902

snuci 5y ago

Not to be forgotten, Amiga's AMIX was a proper port of System V Release 4 on the Amiga 2500UX and 3000UX. Here it is running on the Amiga 2500UX: https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A2500UX.jpg https://vintagecomputer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/A2500U...

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

This machine actually could be in many ways considered a predecessor to the Atari ST rather than the Amiga. Shiraz Shivji (one of the designers of the C64 and eventually director of engineering at Commodore) worked on it and then left to join the new Atari Corp with Jack Tramiel where he was the chief designer of the Atari ST hardware. In fact there was a lawsuit accusing him of stealing IP from the CBM900 (he was acquitted.)

EvanAnderson 5y ago
The whole situation with Jack Tramiel leaving Commodore, acquiring Atari, Commodore staff following Jack to Atari, the Amiga Corporation[1] loan from Atari pre-Tramiel, subsequent repayment under Tramiel, and acquisition by post-Tramiel Commodore reads like fiction. It's an amazing story to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Corporation
- Zenst 5y ago
  Oh there are a few documentary's that cover it and was a a good one saw recently that encompassed all this - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5706894/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5706894/ do recommend that one.
  - foresto 5y ago
    The documentary is available here: https://archive.org/details/8bit_Generation_The_Commodore_Wars https://archive.org/details/8bit_Generation_The_Commodore_Wa... Following the "by Commodore" link on that page leads to some other interesting archives as well, including an AmigaDOS manual.
alexisread 5y ago
Looking at the specs and focus, out of interest, what would have be taken from the C900 over to the ST? Different CPU, board and bus, graphics on a plugin card, different OS, different market focus and pricepoint. I can't see anything there apart from Shivji that's common. I'm guessing that this was a countersuit to delay Atari after they sued Commodore for 'stealing' the Amiga, thereby delaying the Amiga. As far as OS goes, ironically MultiTos is POSIX compatible. Had Atari stuck it out, it might have ended up similar to OSX in that you could cross-compile UNIX apps to MultiTos to use with a standard UI (GEM).
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Yeah for sure there's little in common and I'm sure it was just corporate legal hostility. But I'm sure the general experience of developing a 16-bit machine was educational. And I'm sure the choice to go with the 68000 (or NS32k which they also evaluated at first at Atari) was likely informed by the annoyance of having fiddled with the Z8000's awkward segmented architecture. Re: POSIX, we Atari users were already crosscompiling things to MiNT (that MultiTOS was based on) back then before MultiTOS came out. In 1990/1991 I ran a setup (off floppies!) that had a bash shell, uucp, nn, etc all set up. Friends of mine with larger hard drives and TTs were using GCC and so on. This was all just before Linux came out and before I moved to a 486, which I only did because Linux was an option there. Eric R Smith was the author of MiNT and was hired by Atari in their latter days to work on TOS and make his work "official." Sort of a last gasp effort after neglecting TOS for years, and the last few OS releases for the Falcon and TT were actually pretty compelling and competitive in some ways with what was on the Mac, etc.. Later, MiNT was all open sourced under GPL as FreeMiNT and it's still very actively developed today. You can set up a whole open source Unix-like environment today on FreeMiNT + EmuTOS complete with bash, login, initd, etc. RPM package management, whole thing.
  - marktangotango 5y ago
    > informed by the annoyance of having fiddled with the Z8000's awkward segmented architecture. That's interesting, I was under the impression that Z8000 uptake was hindered due to bugs in it's implementation, do you have any references about this segmented architecture?
eschaton 5y ago
Acquitted only applies to criminal charges. Since this was a civil and not criminal matter, you’d just say that Shivji won (or Commodore lost) the lawsuit.

bullen 5y ago

I bought an Amiga 1200 yesterday for 300EUR. I had a new transparent case for it since a while back, time to fill that case! I also hoarded breadbins for a while with RR-Net and Nunchuk64 + NES classic controllers, so I definitely have the Commodore disease! The first open successful computer; the last being the Raspberry 4, for eternity probably... Q.E.D.

jacques-noris 5y ago
>The first open successful computer I love the C64, but the first was probably the Apple II
- bullen 5y ago
  The Apple 2 was a prototype for the C64. You have to look at the video and audio: the SID is still to our day one of the best analog 8-bit generation synth chips, the VIC-II pushed 8-bit graphics to their logical extreme. NES and SMS both had separate video chips that where not programmable from the CPU or shared the RAM in the same manner. Also the C64 had software that you could copy! Finally the C64 has more releases today than the PC, the Apple 2 has maybe one release every 2 years: http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk Maybe I should have added "with audio/visual quality".

nix23 5y ago

If one is interested you can try Confluence as a VM...and btw it's opensource now: https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/#vbox https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/#vbox https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/ https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/ http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manpage.php?contents http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manpage.php?contents http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/manual.php

reaperducer 5y ago

Unrelated to the post, but since this thread is likely to attract a bunch of Commodore enthusiasts, I'll mention here that a Commodore 64-DX/C-65 popped up on fleaBay a few days ago. Unfortunately, it's in kinda rough shape, and the starting bid is $15,000. I don't think he'll get any bidders at that price.

rsync 5y ago
Huh. I have a very nice 64-DX/C-65 on a shelf in the lab. I also have a factory sealed, brand-new-in-box, Sun Sparcstation 20 :)

jamesdco 5y ago

Enjoyed reading this, nothing like a trip down the memory lane

clan 5y ago

We have got one of those as well for those interested in more details. https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 https://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Commodore/CBM900 The boot-roms of the CBM900 has been reverse-engineered in the PyReveng3 project: https://github.com/bsdphk/PyReveng3/tree/master/examples/CBM900 https://github.com/bsdphk/PyReveng3/tree/master/examples/CBM...

theodric 5y ago

I remember when one of these appeared on eBay, and still regret not buying it!

jamesdco 5y ago
same here :)

jamesdco 5y ago

This is quite an interesting read for the retro game enthusiasts: https://pikuma.com/blog/game-console-history-for-programmers https://pikuma.com/blog/game-console-history-for-programmers

retrocoder 5y ago
Great read!

lproven 5y ago

Discussion about the same machine in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666860

rbanffy 5y ago

Past the boot, where it used a VGA/EGA/MDA-like font, the terminal font looks remarkably similar to Sun's console font. I love it! BTW, if the Amiga came out with a Unix-like OS from the start (such as Coherent), it'd have been a game changer. With some (a lot, really) luck we could be all be running Unixes on different CPUs instead of Windows on x86's... I also like that cursor keys are closer to where the mouse uses to be (for the right-handed, at least)

zozbot234 5y ago
> BTW, if the Amiga came out with a Unix-like OS from the start (such as Coherent), it'd have been a game changer. The first versions of the Amiga ran on the MC68000 processor which could not support a MMU, so no Unix there. AIUI, this became first possible with the MC68010, which however was quite uncommon early on.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Microsoft sold Xenix for the 68000, I wonder how that worked given the often mentioned unix problem caused by inability of the processor to recover from bus faults. As for a MMU, I guess it's not a given that Unix requires paged virtual memory. Traditionally whole processes were swapped in and out.
  - my123 5y ago
    Xenix was also sold for the 8086.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      I learned C on a Unix-like OS, QNX, running on a 640K 8088 PC clone. It booted from a 360K floppy and had, in those 360K, a shell, vi and a C compiler.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        I still miss QNX. Rock solid, super responsive, very tight and a neat model to build scalable applications.

rbanffy 5y ago

Another interesting Z-8000-based machine (and this one was actually produced and sold) is the Olivetti M-20. It's chunky, but I really like it's monolithic design. It says "serious computer" all over it. If anyone has a spare one, my birthday is in March.

flohofwoe 5y ago
Also the East German P8000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P8000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P8000), unfortunately(?) the "higher-ups" then decided to hop on the x86 train not much later. PS: the conversion from East German Mark to Deutsche Mark doesn't make much sense on that Wikipedia page (the conversion factor seems to be inverted).
- pram 5y ago
  I'm impressed they had so many OS clones, even UNIX!