Branching the thread away from Compaq deskpro boards: "What We Have Lost"

[Chuck Guzis]

On 8/1/21 9:14 AM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
> On Aug 1, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> CP/M is surprisingly alive for something so old and rudimentary and
>> seeing some activity, e.g. CPMish, but I don't think anyone would
>> claim it has much of a future. CCP/M is dead although I think Toshiba
>> just about supports 4680 and 4690.
> 
> I have to admit, this one surprises me.
> 
>> I'm struggling to think of anything else. There are things but they're
>> even more niche than say Haiku. Redox OS? Genode? HelenOS?
> 
> OpenVMS 9.2 will run on x86, as does the 9.1FT that’s currently out.  I believe they’ve even had it running on an Atom-based board.
> 
> z/OS runs on IBM Mainframes, there is also “IBM i”, which was previously called OS/400.
> 
> Last I checked, GCOS-8 is still running, but with Itanium end-of-life, I’m not sure what on.  It’s been a niche market for decades.  I’d argue that it was a serious niche when I was using it in the early 90’s.

There are MCU RTOSs, for example, https://www.freertos.org FreeRTOS,
than can be found in many IoT devices.  Not Linux, Windows, or Android.

The lack of interest in the classic/vintage computing segments is a bit
surprising, since many of these MCUs far exceed the computing power of
many legacy platforms.

Silicon is cheap.

--Chuck