OS-9
| Developer | Microware bought by Radisys in 2001 (now owned by Microware LP) |
|---|---|
| Written in | C, Assembly language |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Closed source |
| Initial release | 1979 |
| Latest release | 6.0 / Q4 2015 |
| Marketing target | high-performance, high-availability real-time software solution for advanced industrial automation & control, medical instrumentation, aerospace and transportation systems |
| Available in | English |
| Platforms | Motorola 6809, Motorola 680x0 CPUs, ColdFire, SuperH, ARM/XScale, MIPS, PowerPC, Intel x86 architecture |
| Kernel type | Real-time kernel |
| Default user interface | CLI in all versions, some platforms support a GUI |
| License | Proprietary |
| Official website | www |
OS-9 is a family of real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user operating systems, developed in the 1980s, originally by Microware Systems Corporation for the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. It was purchased by Radisys Corp in 2001. It is currently owned by Microware LP.
The OS-9 family was popular for general-purpose computing and remains in use in commercial embedded systems and amongst hobbyists. Today, OS-9 is a product name used by both a Motorola 68000-series machine language OS and a portable (PowerPC, x86, ARM, MIPS, SH4, etc.) version written in C, originally known as OS-9000.
The first version ("OS-9 Level One"), which dates back to 1979–80, was written in assembly language for the Motorola 6809 CPU, and provided a single 64 KB address space in which all processes ran. It was developed as a supporting operating system for the BASIC09 project, contracted for by Motorola as part of the 6809 development. A later 6809 version ("Level Two") takes advantage of memory mapping hardware, supported up to 2 MB of memory (ca 1980) in most implementations, and included a GUI on some platforms.
In 1983, OS-9/6809 was ported to Motorola 68000 assembly language and extended (called OS-9/68K); and a still later (1989) version was rewritten mostly in C for further portability. The portable version was initially called OS-9000 and was released for 80386 PC systems around 1989, then ported to PowerPC around 1995. These later versions lack the memory mapping facilities of OS-9/6809 Level Two simply because they do not need them. They used a single flat address space that all processes share; memory mapping hardware, if present, is mostly used to ensure that processes access only that memory they have the right to access. The 680x0 and 80386 (and later) MPUs all directly support far more than 1 MB of memory in any case.
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