I've been thinking about stuff, and got to thinking... it'd be
interesting if there were a semi-modern, multitasking, graphical OS
for the IIGS - not necessarily backwards compatible with GS/OS. (The
semi-modern bit means... The Manager on GS/OS does NOT qualify. ;))
Anyway, I'm thinking that starting from scratch with the OS might just
be the best bet - unlike GNO/ME, which uses GS/OS for a lot of stuff.
That doesn't mean that I'd be shunning all of the built-in IIGS stuff
- the Toolbox would come in handy for the GUI. (FWIW, I think I know
how I'd handle the toolbox in a multitasking environment - simply
create a "virtual toolbox" that apps for this OS would make calls to,
and then pass those calls onto the real toolbox. As far as the real
toolbox is concerned, it's just one app with a bunch of windows, that
wants to change its menus. A lot. ;))
But, I suspect a modern multitasking kernel for all of this would be
more efficient. I know, there's no MMU. That never stopped Minix or
ELKS...
Speaking of Minix, I'm almost wondering if some heavily-modified Minix
derived kernel would do the trick. The stock Minix memory manager can
only handle 64k of code and 64k of data per application on a 16-bit
CPU (I think that's a word-length restriction,) but maybe that could
be fixed? Binary compatibility with Minix would be unnecessary, so...
And, IIRC, it has installable file systems, and stuff like that, which
would work nicely in the IIGS ecosystem.
But, Minix is just an idea, and isn't necessarily the best one. It's
just something to think about.
Is anyone interested in such an OS? Either using it, developing it, or
developing for it?