Is OS9 Based On BSD?

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Is OS9 Based On BSD?

This is entirely academic, so no need to do any research to answer this (unless you really want to I guess).

I met someone who claims to have developed Apple software back in the day and to have seen the source code to various versions of Mac system software/Mac OS. He claims that the original system software from 1984 was based on CP/M, but that a transition was made somewhere along the line and OS9 was based on BSD.

I'm well aware that OSX is based on BSD/Darwin, but I was pretty sure that the original system software was written more or less from scratch and everything up through OS9 was just an incrementally growing expansion of that.

I'm also disinclined to believe the technological pronouncements of someone who insists that 68K and PowerPC are the same architecture, and that the incompatibility between them (and need for the 68K emulator) was due to "API differences." Even though this person does, apparently, sell his own operating system.

Posted on Sep 28, 2014 11:58 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,296 points

Sep 28, 2014 3:09 PM in response to Maronan

Mac OS 9 is not based on any Unix system. It was entirely developed more around the original Macintosh concept which has more in common with the Xerox Alto than any Unix. It is not to say you couldn't run Unix on a Mac OS 9 system, in fact there were several Unix flavors available for pre-Mac OS X systems, mostly based on AT&T Unix, more than BSD. Among them are MkLinux, A/UX, and several my page

http://www.macmaps.com/unix.html

has links to. CP/M was more the framework for MS DOS than any version of Macintosh.

* Links to my pages may give me compensation.

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