Why no Contiki for Mac 68K? — #24

Post #24 by Bunsen

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	68k
Post Date	Thu, 2 Jun 2011 - 10:27
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/why-no-contiki-for-mac-68k.16810/

Post

A perhaps more viable solution than eCos would be (ironically) OS-9...

... no, not that one, this one.

)

OS-9 is a family of real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user, Unix-like operating systems, developed in the 1980s for the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. Today, OS-9 is both a Motorola 68000-series machine language OS and a portable version written in C.
In 1983, OS-9/6809 was ported to Motorola 68000 assembly language and extended. Versions of OS-9/68K run on a wide variety of 68000 family platforms, including the Sharp X68000 in Japan. It was also ported to the Atari ST.

Unfortunately, it's proprietary code. There's an open-source rewrite of the original 6809 version called NitrOS-9, with a GUI of sorts.

A couple of interesting snippets:

IIRC some years back Gibbs Ultrascience sold a port of OS/68000 v2.4 that ran under the then-current MacOS....

AFAIR in 1991/1992 the german distributor Dr. Keil sold a port of OS-9/68k V2.4 adapted to the Mac LC, LC II and some other actual Mac models. No emulation of OS-9, just running "native" OS-9, and not necessary to have MacOS booted.

Though it's built for a completely different CPU (Z80), and dependent on some of its specific features, SymbOS is pretty inspiring.