Non MS OSes in PC-Task?

[nicholas]

Wikipedia corroborates Commodore licensing Amiga technology in exchange for REXX, but it doesn't say whether any of the AOS code actually made it into OS/2 or not. In any case, certainly Microsoft was involved.

IIRC it was GUI technology that IBM licensed from CBM for OS/2.

On a related note, I believe Sun licensed the Autoconfig technology from CBM for use in their SPARC machines.

[nicholas]

Commodore didn't get REXX from IBM. ARexx was a commercial product by William Hawes that they licensed for inclusion into AmigaOS 2.0.

Wasn't there some problem with the licensing of AREXX from Hawes? CBM not paying for it or something?

[nicholas]

Getting back to the original question, there must be a bunch of embedded x86 OSes that don't require MMU functionality...

There is uCLinux but one would have to compile own 486 boot images.

The old QNX demo floppy would probably boot too.

Also, there is ELKS.

[nicholas]

I can't remember whether Minix straight-up doesn't use the MMU or just doesn't require it, but I believe that's the case. And there's ELKS. Also, FreeDOS might be worth a shot.

Minix 2.04 was the last version to work without an MMU (286 distro).

http://www.minix3.org/previous-versions/
http://minix1.woodhull.com/

[nicholas]

GEM
CPM86

[nicholas]

http://qnx.projektas.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm