Re: Apple OS9 system not recognising email files sent from Windows98

[blackm00@cam.org (Michael Black)]

Exegete <millers@noneofyourbusiness.com> wrote in message news:<3D7F5AEE.5020806@noneofyourbusiness.com>...
> David Empson wrote:
> > Mike Pfaiffer <mike@digitalcivilization.ca> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>NJS wrote:
> >>
> >>>Can any Apple or Windows user tell me why when I send email
> >>>attachments from my Windows 98 machine (using outlook)to an Apple OS9
> >>>the file sometimes appears as "winmail.dat" and cannot be opened.  Is
> >>>there a fix?
> >>
> >>      As others have pointed out, Apple never made a product called OS9.
> >>However they did make an operating system for the Macintosh called
> >>"System 9".
> >
> >
> > No they didn't.  It is called "Mac OS 9".  (They started using "Mac OS"
> > instead of "System" as of version 7.6.)
> >
> > Further to another poster's comment about the operating system for the
> > 6809: it was "OS/9"
>
> As in OS/2?
>
> Level One or Level Two? Level One worked on TRS-80 CoCo 2, one had to
> have a CoCo 3 to run Level Two. The 3 had a 68E09B as I recall.
>
> Wasn't OS 9 a sort of ROMable Unix?
>
> Roy
>
> (not "OS9") if I remember right.
>

No, it was OS-9, and it came from Microware.  It was most visible,
and perhaps most popular, on the Radio Shack Color Computer, but
it originated earlier.

Microware was already making some monitor programs for 6800-based
computers.  The various versions were replacements for Motorola's
"BUG" monitors, and I believe came in ROM.  One of them was multi-tasking
if I remember.

When Motorola came out with the 6809, intended to be useful for
higher-level languages, it wanted a BASIC interpreter for it.
They went to Microware, and they came up with BASIC-09 which had
some things that put it ahead of the average Microsoft BASIC of
the day.  But Microware went a step further, and created a whole
operating system for this new CPU.  It was multi-tasking and
multi-user, and yes, there were similarities to Unix.

Before it was available for the CoCo, it was running on
all the 6809 based computers from such companies as SWTP, Gimix
and Smoke Signal Broadcasting.  These were big computers on
the level of the original S-100 bus computers, like the Altair.

Memory tells me that Level II, that used memory management
hardware, came first.  If I'm wrong about that, certainly Level
II predated the CoCo.

When the CoCo came out (which was pretty much a copy of a Motorola
application note for the 6809), OS-9 soon followed, as a product
from Radio Shack.  The price dropped dramatically from what OS-9
was selling for on those other computers.  OS-9 level II was
only available from Radio Shack when they had a computer, the CoCo III,
that had the needed hardware to run it.  Of course, with a bit
of patching, you could run Level I on the CoCo III.

And as people have mentioned, there were a couple of 6809 co-processor
cards for the Apple II (I remember even seeing a clone of one
of them), and for at least one of those, you could get a version of
OS-9.  Though, as far as I know the card didn't have memory management
hardware, so you had to stay with Level I.

    Michael