Professional OS-9 for the Mac       realtime OS/OS-9, Mac Plus
OS-9 Comes to the Macintosh
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Ultrascience last week released the first version of OS-9 for
the Mac, a full implementation of Microware's OS-9 version 2.3.
In addition to its uses in imaging, process control, and
robotics, one of the benefits of the operating system is it
lets you put a multitasking, multiuser operating system on your
Macintosh by connecting dumb terminals to the Mac via modem and
printer ports, without modifying your Mac. The OS lets you run
standard Mac software and the many OS-9 business and industrial
applications at about 20 percent of the cost of a LAN (local-area
network).
 
If you're thinking of buying a LAN, you might want to consider
OS-9 as an alternative, provided every user doesn't require a
graphics monitor. With OS-9, several people can do word
processing, accounting, or bar coding, while someone else does
graphics on the hub terminal. In its first implementation, OS-9
appears as a folder that you click to do realtime multitasking.
You can't yet hot key to the Mac while OS-9 runs in the
background, although the company says a version scheduled to
ship in 1990 will let you do that.
 
OS-9 for the Mac supports C, Basic, Forth, Fortran, Modula-2,
MUMPS, and Pascal, in addition to all the Mac ToolBox calls and
AppleTalk, providing full compatibility with third-party Mac
devices and color and black-and-white QuickDraw commands.
 
Perhaps the best thing about OS-9 for the Mac is it requires
just 150K bytes of memory, allowing you to reap the benefits of
multitasking and multiple users on a Mac Plus without
discarding your Mac apps.
 
Price: Mac Plus or SE version, $780; Mac II, $900; Mac IIx or
SE/30, $960.
 
Contact: Ultrascience, a division of Gibb Laboratories, Inc.,
1824 Wilmette Ave., Wilmette, IL 60091, (312) 256-0080.
 
                              --- David L. Andrews
 
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