textfiles/messages/ALANWESTON/1996/CIS02_11.txt

#: 21351 S1/General Interest
    03-Feb-96  22:20:00
Sb: #What is OS9?
Fm: Andy Weed 76555,231
To: ALL

I've heard of OS9 over the years and now I'm using Phillips DVI machines which
use it. Can someone give me the basics about this opperating system? It it
similar or derived from UNIX?

-Andy

There is 1 Reply.

#: 21363 S1/General Interest
    07-Feb-96  11:59:02
Sb: #21351-What is OS9?
Fm: Kevin Darling 76703,4227
To: Andy Weed 76555,231

Hi Andy,

There's a file called OS9FAQ.TXT in Library 1 you can look at.

Philips CD-i players also use OS-9, as do many of the coming  interactive
settop TV boxes.  It's also heavily used in industrial controllers, such as
factory line supervision, suspension bridge monitoring, and even Disney rides.

It's native file system and many of its path operations seem to be derived from
Unix, but the OS itself really isn't.  When it first came out about 16 years
ago it already had much of what is considered "new" today... microkernel,
loadable device drivers, modularity, ROMmability, etc.

Ask away if you have more questions.

best - kevin

#: 21357 S1/General Interest
    06-Feb-96  12:03:35
Sb: OS9MAXIM.ARJ
Fm: DTR 100302,3271
To: Sysop (X)

Dear Mike Ward,

unfortunately I did now overwrite the OS9MAX update for OS-9 CD-ROM creating
(the file name was OS9MAXIM.ARJ) Can you re-contruct the file with description
or must I upload this again.

Do I have to fill in the item hostname ? What is it for ?

Thanks

Oliver   

#: 21362 S1/General Interest
    07-Feb-96  06:49:23
Sb: arj
Fm: Jost Eberbach 73502,2041
To: tom farrow 72701,543 (X)

>>Also is there any good spreadsheet out there for os9-68000 all I have is sc
which sorta hangs up and then there is @now and other functions that don't
really work. Thanks Tom Farrow<<

There is a spreadsheet for OS-9 available from a company called RTware. It's a
threedimensional spreadsheet, has much more functions than a regular
spreadsheet. It'S so versatile, it can be used as an integrated programming
environment to create realtime applications e.g. for control systems.

It's called ControlCalc. To get more info about it, you may want to contact
Rich Clarke at RTware. Their email address is: rtware@mercury.interpath.com

Jost

#: 21365 S1/General Interest
    08-Feb-96  17:26:58
Sb: CoCo 25 line screen?
Fm: John L. Wilkerson Jr. 71140,77
To: ALL

I am looking for the patch or program that allows for a 25 line screen on the
CoCo.

Anyone know what or where it can be found?

#: 21359 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    06-Feb-96  23:19:42
Sb: #Checking on dead parents
Fm: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203
To: All

Is there any way a child process running in user mode can generate a signal if
its parent dies. Here is my situation:

        parent processes spans child,
        parent/child communicate though shared data module created by parent,
        parent/child sync via events (event created by parent).

If the parent dies a sudden death, the child not only hangs around forever, but
even if you kill the child, the data module and the event still hang around. It
would be nice if the child could be notified if the parent dies...then it could
delete the data module (if it still exists) and delete the event.

Any ideas on this appreciated!

There is 1 Reply.

#: 21361 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    07-Feb-96  04:06:12
Sb: #21359-Checking on dead parents
Fm: Ian J Shearer 100410,2733
To: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203 (X)

Bob,

>> It would be nice if the child could be notified if the parent dies <<

Since you say 'if the parent dies a sudden death' I guess you can't signal the
child from the parent, since the death is unexpected. You could have the child
check that the parent is still there, however.

It's a while since I did this, so you might need to improvise a little. Try
having the parent pass the child the parent process id. At regular intervals,
the child then fetches the parents process descriptor using _os_gprdsc(). If
the parent is dead I THINK you should get an error from that call.

I used to do a similar thing when I had problems with a process locking up on
I/O. From the process descriptor (if I remember correctly) you can get the info
normally shown by the 'procs' utility, so you can tell if all I/O activity on a
process has halted, or if it's not taking any CPU time.

Hope this helps.

  -Ian J Shearer, Onyx Systems Ltd.
   WWW - http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/OnyxSystems

#: 21360 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    06-Feb-96  23:20:07
Sb: #ppp
Fm: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203
To: all

Has anyone ported a ppp (point to point protocol) interface to osk?

I have seen source code for a unix implementation of ppp and it doesn't seem to
be all that complicated...but the unix code I saw created device drivers to do
this. I'm not really knowledgeable about internet protocols, or unix device
drivers to even start a port of this.

It seems that my internet provider will no longer be supplying shell accounts
and ppp will be the only access. I don't really need all the gfx stuff
available under windows...so can this be done?


There is 1 Reply.

#: 21364 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    08-Feb-96  01:52:10
Sb: #21360-ppp
Fm: David Breeding 72330,2051
To: Bob van der Poel 76510,2203 (X)

 > Has anyone ported a ppp (point to point protocol) interface to osk?

 > I have seen source code for a unix implementation of ppp and it doesn't
 > seem to be all that complicated...but the unix code I saw created device
 > drivers to do this. I'm not really knowledgeable about internet protocols,
 > or unix device drivers to even start a port of this.

It looks like a pretty big undertaking.  I believe I saw where someone said
they might put a bug in your ear <G>

I have a zip file containing all the standards for all the protocols. The zip
is about 833+ K  Would you like for me to email it to you?

 > It seems that my internet provider will no longer be supplying shell
 > accounts and ppp will be the only access. I don't really need all the gfx
 > stuff available under windows...so can this be done?

It certainly can be done, but whether anyone or group would have the time to do
so is the big question.  It is one thing I would have liked to have seen on our
systems, but after taking a look at it, it looks like a tremendous amount of
work ahead.

As a matter of fact, just last night I installed Winsock and Eudora on my
brother's PC just to see if I could and to become familiar with it. I set it up
for my own account, (None of us have figured out how to come up with a complete
logon script yet - if possible) and I don't think anyone could figure out the
contortions we have to go through to get on <G>

Anyway, I went in with Eudora and got my mail, I think I had about 4 msgs.  It
was fantastic.  In fact, I happened to have a MIME- encoded file attached and
it came through automatically.  Much simpler than using my system.  It's not
that bad with a shell account, but with the rates we are getting blistered
with, you can't afford to spend so much time online reading and replying to
mail.

I've just about decided it's easier to switch than fight where Internet access
is concerned.

                         -- David Breeding --
   CIS 72330,2051  |  Delphi DBREEDING  |  dbree@duo-county.com

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