3 ms·

No.. not about a never-heard-of Amiga 700. Commodore PET history. Never heard of a Commodore 700 in this context either. Maybe I should brush up on my PET his

No.. not about a never-heard-of Amiga 700. Commodore PET history. Never heard of a Commodore 700 in this context either. Maybe I should brush up on my PET history knowledge?

rbanffy 3y ago
There was even a Commodore 900, based on, IIRC, the Zilog Z8000 that ran Coherent, a Unix-like OS. It had a case that inspired the Amiga 2000 one. Development was dropped in favour of the Amiga. I wish they at least used Coherent as a base for the Amiga OS. Having every Amiga hacker getting used to Unix would have changed the world.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  Well, _technically_, there was at least the A3000 UX with a Commodore Unix flavor, as you are probably aware. It was just unattainably expensive, and I agree that a real Unix as the base of the Amiga operating system would have been very interesting. My own Linux skills are well based in my Amiga CLI experiences as a teen
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Yes, but it was a higher end model and didn’t run Amiga native software. In many ways the native OS was more sophisticated than the unixes that existed back then, but it’s also one of the dead ends in the evolution of computers.
- Findecanor 3y ago
  Coherent required a harddrive, which was an expensive upgrade for home users at the time. The Amiga 1000 also came with half the RAM of the Commodore 900. The Amiga was originally supposed to have got another disk operating system, called "CAOS" but the company hired to develop it failed to deliver, so Metacomco was hired to port TRIPOS to the Amiga in time for release (as "Amiga DOS" / dos.library). CAOS was supposedly supposed to be more Unix-like than the AmigaDOS we got: in file names, protection (with user IDs!) and in command syntax. <https://www.devili.iki.fi/mirrors/haynie/caos.html https://www.devili.iki.fi/mirrors/haynie/caos.html>
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    A full Coherent install would, but I'm sure it can be slimmed down to a kernel, a libc and an init system that would fit in a floppy. I learned C on a PC/XT running QNX from a floppy containing the kernel, just enough OS to run, vi, and a C compiler/linker.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Unix-like systems were just not very useful back then, the MC68k didn't even have memory protection. Most apps back then were written to run on bare metal, with few or no layers to abstract away hardware access. It's only with the MC68020 and the Intel 80386 that MMU's and memory protection became a default feature that could be relied on to exist. And *nix like OS's were ported to the hardware shortly thereafter.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    QNX could run on a PC/XT from a floppy disk. Memory protection is good, but not a hard requirement for a Unix-like OS.

No.. not about a never-heard-of Amiga 700. Commodore PET history. Never heard of a Commodore 700 in this context either. Maybe I should brush up on my PET history knowledge?

rbanffy 3y ago

There was even a Commodore 900, based on, IIRC, the Zilog Z8000 that ran Coherent, a Unix-like OS. It had a case that inspired the Amiga 2000 one. Development was dropped in favour of the Amiga. I wish they at least used Coherent as a base for the Amiga OS. Having every Amiga hacker getting used to Unix would have changed the world.

Cockbrand 3y ago
Well, _technically_, there was at least the A3000 UX with a Commodore Unix flavor, as you are probably aware. It was just unattainably expensive, and I agree that a real Unix as the base of the Amiga operating system would have been very interesting. My own Linux skills are well based in my Amiga CLI experiences as a teen
- rbanffy 3y ago
  Yes, but it was a higher end model and didn’t run Amiga native software. In many ways the native OS was more sophisticated than the unixes that existed back then, but it’s also one of the dead ends in the evolution of computers.
Findecanor 3y ago
Coherent required a harddrive, which was an expensive upgrade for home users at the time. The Amiga 1000 also came with half the RAM of the Commodore 900. The Amiga was originally supposed to have got another disk operating system, called "CAOS" but the company hired to develop it failed to deliver, so Metacomco was hired to port TRIPOS to the Amiga in time for release (as "Amiga DOS" / dos.library). CAOS was supposedly supposed to be more Unix-like than the AmigaDOS we got: in file names, protection (with user IDs!) and in command syntax. <https://www.devili.iki.fi/mirrors/haynie/caos.html https://www.devili.iki.fi/mirrors/haynie/caos.html>
- rbanffy 3y ago
  A full Coherent install would, but I'm sure it can be slimmed down to a kernel, a libc and an init system that would fit in a floppy. I learned C on a PC/XT running QNX from a floppy containing the kernel, just enough OS to run, vi, and a C compiler/linker.
zozbot234 3y ago
Unix-like systems were just not very useful back then, the MC68k didn't even have memory protection. Most apps back then were written to run on bare metal, with few or no layers to abstract away hardware access. It's only with the MC68020 and the Intel 80386 that MMU's and memory protection became a default feature that could be relied on to exist. And *nix like OS's were ported to the hardware shortly thereafter.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  QNX could run on a PC/XT from a floppy disk. Memory protection is good, but not a hard requirement for a Unix-like OS.