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+<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
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+<!-- This article was copied from
+     http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/microware.html -->
+<article>
+<articleinfo>
+<author><firstname>Stephen</firstname><surname>Jacobs</surname>
+<authorblurb>
+<para>Stephen Jacobs is a contributing editor for Videomaker magazine.</para>
+</authorblurb>
+</author>
+<title>David Versus Goliath</title>
+<abstract>
+<para>Little Microware has a rock called OS-9 in its sling as it takes on
+the  giants in the battle to own the multimedia set-top box.</para>
+</abstract>
+<copyright>
+  <year>1993</year>
+  <year>2002</year>
+  <holder>The Cond&eacute; Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.</holder>
+</copyright>
+ <publisher><publishername>Wired Digital, Inc.</publishername></publisher>
+<pubdate>Sep 1994</pubdate>
+<issuenum>2.09</issuenum>
+</articleinfo>
+
+
+<para>
+
+
+In case you hadn't noticed, everyone's talking interactive TV these days. 
+Product trials, broken deals, mergers, start-ups - there's a rash of ploys 
+to make your boob tube brilliant by hooking a computer to it. To many in 
+this country, the word computer is still wedded to images of Silicon Valley 
+and Microsoft, the company that strides the personal computing landscape 
+like a Goliath. Chairman Bill Gates has said Microsoft is spending a cool 
+US$100 million a year on developing software for multimedia, interactive 
+television, and the information superhighway. The popular wisdom says that 
+what Bill wants, Bill gets. Yet some of the hottest developments in software 
+for interactive television are happening nowhere near Silicon Valley; 
+they're happening thousands of miles away in the Midwest.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Des Moines, Iowa, is not the city that most of us would pick as the site of 
+a burgeoning industry revolution. But then, Des Moines surprises. Sure, it's 
+a small Midwest town surrounded by flat and well-farmed land, but that's not 
+all there is to it. There's a Thai restaurant whose zillion-page beer list 
+boasts brews from all over the world. There's a monumental modern Civic 
+Center whose concert hall hosts world-class guitarists. And there's 
+Microware Systems Corporation, a 200-employee, privately held corporation 
+that makes an operating system called OS-9.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Microware is headquartered in a 25,000-square-foot building just down the 
+road from the offices of the National Pork Producer's Council. So far, it 
+may not sound like anything to get excited about. OS-9 was created to 
+control manufacturing and robotics applications. The latest addition to its 
+product line, Digital Audio Video Interactive Decoder (DAVID), is a version 
+of OS-9 for set-top terminals, the cable decoder boxes of interactive 
+television.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+DAVID is the program that runs "under the hood," the skeleton around which 
+user interfaces will be built by manufacturers of the terminals. It must be 
+a pretty impressive set of bones - it's been licensed to 15 manufacturers of 
+set-top terminals for interactive television, including IBM, Philips, Zenith 
+Corporation, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Kyocera, GoldStar, Samsung, Adaptive 
+MicroWare, Divicom, and EURODEC. By the time you read this, more will be on 
+board. Oracle's media servers will communicate with these DAVID-based 
+set-top boxes in Bell Atlantic interactive television trials in New Jersey 
+and Northern Virginia. (A groundbreaking Federal Communications Commission 
+decision in June cleared the way for Bell Atlantic to compete with cable in 
+providing video programming in Tom's River, New Jersey.) Other announced 
+interactive TV trials that are using DAVID include Nynex's Manhattan and 
+Rhode Island trials; Cox Communications's trial in Omaha, Nebraska; Telecom 
+Australia's system; and Hong Kong Telecom's system.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Though Microware's operating system was developed for manufacturing and 
+process control, it also has been used in multimedia for some time. DAVID 
+has its roots in the operating systems for Tandy's Color Computer 3 and 
+Philips CD-I, which are versions of OS-9 with platform-specific modules. 
+Even so, conventional wisdom puts a small, relatively unknown software 
+company at a disadvantage against a major player like Microsoft.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Predictably, Microware President Ken Kaplan doesn't see it that way.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"I don't know what other people think, but I just don't think Microsoft's 
+gonna be a player. I just think it's too late. We've been working on this 
+for two, three years. We've got real product. By the time they figure out 
+how to put Windows on a set-top box, we'll have a couple of million boxes 
+out there and working. At least that's the plan," says Kaplan.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Since 1977, Microware has been developing ROMable (i.e., small enough
+to fit in the Read Only Memory chips on a system's motherboard)
+real-time operating systems, and doing quite well, thank you.
+Microware began when, as Drake University students, Ken Kaplan and
+Larry Crane (vice president of advanced research) got a grant from the
+National Science Foundation to write software for first-generation
+microprocessors. They started with the Motorola 6800 - the precursor
+to the 68000 series of CPUs that would drive the Macintosh.  This work
+led them to develop RT/68, a small, efficient multitasking operating
+system for industrial applications. Kaplan and Crane founded Microware
+to develop and sell RT/68, putting a small ad in <emphasis>Byte</emphasis> magazine.
+Orders began rolling in from around the world. Physicist Rudolf Keil
+at the University of Heidelberg used RT/68 to control lasers for
+physics research.  More than an early user, Keil was one of the first
+Microware customers to begin working with the company. He ended up
+leaving the university to become Microware's German 
+distributor.
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Motorola was so pleased with RT/68 that in 1978 the company asked Microware 
+to develop a Basic language for the 6809 processor, the bridge chip between 
+the 6800 and Motorola's popular 68000 series. Microware began developing the 
+Basic and an operating system to go with it. That was the beginning of OS-9. 
+Kaplan and his team modeled OS-9's I/O and process handling after those in 
+Unix, which at the time was a relatively unknown operating system. 
+Microware's decision to use Unix as a model may have been a gamble then, but 
+it has proved to be a fortuitous choice: Unix has since grown to become the 
+lingua franca of the Internet. As a result, the OS-9 of a decade ago was 
+more ready for the information superhighway than many other operating 
+systems are today.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+OS-9 is popular in industrial applications worldwide for robotics, 
+telecommunications, or any other type of application that requires a small, 
+on-board operating system to handle a large number of processes extremely 
+quickly. The head of Microware's French office, Nick Rainey, ticked off 
+several applications that have made OS-9 popular in Europe:
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"CERN, the particle accelerator; the French pay-phone systems that now run 
+off 'smart cards' - that's OS-9; British Telecom; subway systems. I had a 
+big surprise when I went to open the Russian office. They took me over to 
+see the space flight simulators, and they'd been running the whole system 
+off a version of OS-9 that they'd bootlegged from some Germans somewhere. 
+They were really glad to see us!"
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+OS-9 made early inroads in Japan, when Fujitsu made 6809-based personal, 
+multitasking computers for the Japanese market. In the US, OS-9 can be found 
+in NASA simulators as well. Flight simulators, maintenance, and testing 
+equipment for McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, and Boeing also run off of OS-9. 
+Microware's sales are pretty well divided into thirds between the US, 
+Europe, and the Pacific Rim.
+
+
+</para>
+
+<section>
+<title>
+Coming into view
+</title>
+
+<para>
+
+
+Microware seemed to burst into public view from nowhere when Bell
+Atlantic announced specifications for its interactive services in
+January 1994. The specs could only be met by terminals running DAVID.
+This was a surprise, as Bell Atlantic had released a preliminary set
+of specs several months before that appeared to be based on Modular
+Windows, Microsoft's now-dead operating system for multimedia. In
+reaction to the Bell Atlantic announcement, the January 18 <citetitle>Wall
+Street Journal</citetitle> ran a feature story about Microware. Since then,
+Kaplan and company have been signing set-top box contracts right and
+left.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Modular Windows is kind of a mystery. Apparently, it was to have been
+a smaller, faster, trimmer version of the Windows operating system for
+set-top boxes. It has been replaced by a new system from Microsoft
+called Tiger. The <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle> piece left the impression
+that Bell Atlantic ran DAVID and Modular Windows in competition and
+chose Microware over Microsoft.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Not true, says Microware's multimedia marketing manager Arthur Orduna. "We 
+didn't go head-to-head with Modular Windows because there was nothing to go 
+head-to-head with."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Orduna says Bell Atlantic asked Microware to assemble an OS-9 comparison 
+chart, something that would list the specifications and merits of several 
+different operating systems. Microware was unable to obtain the information 
+it needed on Modular Windows.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"First I called Microsoft directly, and all I could get was 'Give us your 
+number and we'll call you back.' Then we asked a friend of ours to call 
+Microsoft as a developer and ask about Modular Windows, the normal sort of 
+play-acting shit we get from our competitors. What our friend got for an 
+answer was 'Well ... give us all the specs and information about the system 
+you're developing and we'll call you back.' "
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Microware struggled to find someone who knew or would talk about
+Modular Windows. They finally found a source at Tandy, where Modular
+Windows was being used in the development of a home entertainment
+system prototype.  (Microsoft wouldn't talk about it with
+<citetitle>Wired</citetitle>, either, but at press time has just announced its Tiger
+database for interactive set-top 
+boxes.)
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"We talked to this technician who worked on their interactive project," says 
+Orduna. "He really didn't have specs either, but he bitched and bitched 
+about the integration process and how difficult it was to implement Modular 
+Windows on a consumer platform. So I called back the project manager at Bell 
+Atlantic and told him 'I'm faxing you back this OS-9 comparison chart, and I 
+really have to apologize beforehand for the gaping holes in there on the 
+Modular Windows part because we don't know them. But, we have the number of 
+this engineer you can call, and he can give you some insight on what it's 
+like to integrate Mod Windows on a consumer platform.' A couple days later 
+they said, 'OK, you're it.' "
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+As a corporate entity, Bell Atlantic didn't make an agreement with Microware 
+or specify DAVID as <emphasis>the</emphasis> operating system for its set-top terminals. It 
+merely published a set of specifications that only DAVID could meet. No deal 
+has been cut between the two companies, allowing each to keep its freedom 
+and avoiding any accusations of monopolistic or restrictive behavior on the 
+part of Bell Atlantic.
+
+
+</para>
+</section>
+<section>
+<title>Multimedia experts?</title>
+
+<para>
+
+
+CERN and French smart cards may sound far removed from the world of home 
+entertainment systems, but Microware got its foot in that door a long time 
+ago. The company has been slowly building a presence in consumer electronics 
+since the early '80s. That's when Tandy used OS-9 in the Radio Shack Color 
+Computer, fondly remembered by some as the CoCo 3.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"We did the original operating system for the Tandy Color Computer," says 
+Kaplan. "We did a windowing GUI for that called Multiview. So we always 
+thought that OS-9 would be a good operating system for consumers. No one 
+back in those days was thinking about multimedia."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+What they were thinking about was game machines. In the mid-1980s Microsoft 
+announced MSX (Microsoft Extended Basic), a product that was supposed to be 
+an industry standard for computer/game machines like the Commodore 64 and 
+the Atari 800. Microsoft worked with ASCII Corp. in Japan to push the 
+standard to a consortium of manufacturers including Sony, Matsushita, and 
+Yamaha. The plan was to introduce it in Japan and then bring the systems to 
+the states. It was not successful. In January 1986 Microsoft announced its 
+long-term commitment to CD-ROM development. By February 1986 Microsoft and 
+ASCII Corp. had dissolved their relationship.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Meanwhile, Microware's work for Tandy brought the firm to the attention of 
+Philips. Philips had made an early video game system called the Magnavox 
+Odyssey and had asked Microware to collaborate on a new product - originally 
+envisioned as a type of rack-mountable game system. (It eventually evolved 
+into CD-I.) After evaluating systems from 60 other companies, Philips 
+decided to ask Microware to develop CD-I's CD-RTOS, the operating system in 
+every Philips CD-I System.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Microware got the CD-I contract in January 1986, and in the summer of 1986 
+Kaplan got a phone call from Silicon Valley. Bill Gates wanted to buy the 
+company. Kaplan didn't want to sell but was willing to talk about joint 
+ventures. Gates wasn't. The negotiations ended there before they had 
+started, and Gates's picture earned a place of honor on Kaplan's dart board.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+In the meantime, to support CD-I development, Microware formed two joint 
+ventures in the interactive media field. The first is called OptImage. "Both 
+Philips and Microware had to develop software and hardware to make discs," 
+says Kaplan. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem. We needed to make discs to 
+test our software, to test the prototypes. It wouldn't be a core business 
+for either Philips or Microware, but somebody had to do it." Another 
+Microware joint venture called MicroMall has been running CD-I-based 
+shopping and information kiosks in several areas, including Chicago, as a 
+preliminary step in designing shopping services for interactive television. 
+The digital interactive "catalogs" at the heart of the systems use digital 
+stills, audio, and video to display items from J C Penney, Land's End, and 
+others.
+
+
+</para>
+
+</section>
+<section>
+<title>
+
+Getting on the Net
+</title>
+
+<para>
+
+
+While he was working with Philips on CD-I, Kaplan began hearing about 
+another form of future multimedia 
+delivery.
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"Not long after we got involved with CD-I and understood digital audio and 
+digital video, it became clear that ultimately audio and video could be 
+delivered by a network," says Kaplan. "Maybe it would be even better to 
+deliver it via a network rather than via optical disk, but the transmission 
+technology and the digital video compression weren't quite there yet. I 
+remember back in '86 the Philips engineers said, 'There's a way to do it; we 
+can't make the silicon yet, but in four or five years we will.' So it was 
+known back then that it was doable."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+OS-9's popularity in the telephone-switching world had landed Microware on 
+an advisory committee for Bell Atlantic. At about the same time that Philips 
+was beginning to talk about digital video, the phone companies were talking 
+about it as well. Bell Atlantic was starting to talk about sending digital 
+video over copper wires. Bell Atlantic asked Microware if the OS-9 inventor 
+wanted to participate in some of the research. About two years ago, 
+Microware realized that if it combined OS-9 modules written for phone 
+switching and telecommunications networking with the modules written for 
+digital audio and video, they had all the parts of an operating system for 
+set-top terminals. Soon after that, DAVID was born.
+
+
+</para>
+
+</section>
+<section>
+<title>
+
+Driving a prototype
+</title>
+<para>
+
+
+Recently, the folks from Microware have found themselves at a lot of trade 
+shows to show off DAVID, either on their own or sharing booths with Oracle 
+or set-top terminal manufacturers. If you walked into these booths, you'd 
+see a demonstration of digital video on demand being driven by a DAVID 
+set-top box talking to a video server. Additional DAVID networking protocols 
+on the set-top box and the server would be handling the communications 
+between the server's operating system and the DAVID system in the set-top 
+terminal. Of course, all this is transparent to you. All you see is the 
+interface designed by the set-top box manufacturer and the video delivered 
+by the server.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+At a recent demonstration in Des Moines, Microware used a Kyocera prototype 
+set-top terminal. About the size of a standard cable decoder, the box came 
+with one of those massive, 3,000-button multiremotes that are becoming 
+standard in the consumer electronics industry. What wasn't standard were the 
+cursor-control-style keys in one section of the remote. Those were the ones 
+that drove the interactive part of the terminal.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+The video was delivered by one of Microware's prototyping servers, through 
+T1 lines to the local phone company offices several miles away in downtown 
+Des Moines. The remote could perform VCR-type functions on the digitized 
+video quickly and with no sync problems. The system responded instantly, 
+much faster than a VCR. The only downside was the control of the "arrow 
+pointer" via the remote: infrared doesn't seem to be the most effective 
+communications channel between controller and terminal, and scrolling up and 
+down a screen is agonizing.
+
+
+</para>
+
+</section>
+<section>
+<title>
+
+
+So what about Microsoft?
+</title>
+
+<para>
+
+
+Since January there's been a lot of press about Microsoft's plans for 
+interactive TV. From what's being said, Microsoft's model of a delivery 
+system is similar to Microware's.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"We're looking at a switching broadband network," says Karl Buhl, marketing 
+manager in advanced consumer technology for Microsoft. "We'd have four parts 
+to the system: Tiger [Microsoft's current solution] continuous switching at 
+the head end, coax from the head end to the home, a set-top terminal in the 
+home, and a Microsoft software package running the system."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Conventional wisdom says Tiger will blow everything else away. Ken Kaplan 
+doesn't buy it. "Microsoft is coming into this business from a standing 
+start. No one wants them in this business anyway. They're not welcome."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"If Ken thinks we're not wanted here in the industry he should talk
+with TCI," Buhl counters. He says TCI's trials with Microsoft's Tiger
+technology will begin in Seattle at the end of the year. (See
+<citetitle>Wired</citetitle>'s <ulink url="http://www.wired.com/wired/2.07/features/malone.html">interview
+with TCI head John Malone</ulink>, <citetitle>Wired</citetitle> 2.07)
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Obviously, Kaplan thinks it's not too early to count Microsoft out. "Bill 
+Gates says he's been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this 
+business," Kaplan reasons. "Do you know what kind of return he's got to get 
+on that investment? There isn't that much money in set-top-box software, 
+sorry. Microsoft wants to get a piece of everything, probably per 
+transaction. The market can't afford that. It can't afford Microsoft, and 
+those in the industry don't want monopolists dominating their business. Not 
+to mention that Microsoft doesn't have a clue about this business. It's a 
+TV-set business, not a computer business.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"This happened to them once before. They missed the boat totally on 
+networking. That's why Novell took off. Bill didn't figure it out, he didn't 
+see it coming. He didn't approach it right, and Novell came in and ate his 
+lunch."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+According to Microware's Orduna, DAVID was not just a lucky acronym
+choice.  While the name's been trademarked, the logo hasn't been
+finalized. The first version of the DAVID logo followed the biblical
+metaphor right down to a sling. That got a thumbs down as taking the
+joke a bit too far. But if Microware <emphasis>really</emphasis> wants to get
+Microsoft's goat, maybe it'll choose a logo inspired by 
+Novell.
+
+
+</para>
+</section>
+<section>
+<title>
+Why OS-9?
+</title>
+
+<para>
+
+
+Why do set-top terminal companies want a robotics operating system for 
+interactive television?
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Most personal computing operating systems are large and relatively slow. 
+They still don't effectively multitask or run more than one application at a 
+time. They take up a lot of hard-drive space and memory. The multitasking 
+that systems like Windows and System 7 do is "cooperative." Different 
+applications rarely stop or pause each other; they wait for breaks in CPU 
+usage to have the computer change horses between them without shutting each 
+other down. These systems are almost polite. They have response times of 
+half a second at best.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+In robotics or manufacturing systems, operating system needs differ. The 
+scope of the operating system doesn't need to be as broad as that of a 
+computer operating system, and often it must be able to fit into the system 
+memory, right on the circuit board. True multitasking is vital. Different 
+applications, or tasks, need to be able to interrupt each other, and 
+quickly. A response time of half a second is much too slow.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"If a robot arm has reached its position, you probably need to tell it to do 
+something immediately," says Peter Dibble, a research scientist for 
+Microware. "You can't have it just waiting around while another task clears 
+the screen."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Operating systems for set-top terminals must be compact enough not to need a 
+lot of memory or a hard drive, in order to keep the cost of the box down. 
+They must also be fast and multitasking. A half-second response time can 
+give you frozen video or garbled audio.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"There are a lot of things going on in a set-top box at once," says Curt 
+Schwaderer, a principal engineer at Microware. "First, you've got a 
+networking front end that's sending data in at 1.544 Mbits per second. While 
+all this networking stuff is trying to deal with (all this data coming in 
+off the) T1, you've got another piece of the operating system that's taking 
+the data and playing a movie with it. Then there's the third, interactive 
+part, where you press buttons on a remote control. That requires more 
+processing going on inside the box and more networking-type data going back 
+and forth over the serial line so that you can do things like Fast-Forward, 
+Rewind, Stop, Go Back."
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+OS-9 is modular so that it can fit a wide variety of needs without taking up 
+a lot of system resources. A modular operating system allows designers to 
+pick exactly which parts they will need. The heart of the operating system, 
+called a kernel, fits in only 29 Kbytes of chip memory. DAVID, which is just 
+a specific mix of OS-9, networking, and video modules, will fit all the 
+necessary parts for a set-top terminal OS into about 256 Kbytes of memory 
+while running true multitasking, not cooperative multitasking.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+Some set-top box manufacturers are waiting for the development of a video 
+compression scheme more advanced than the current MPEG 1. Not Microware. The 
+first DAVID set-top boxes will use systems that TCI initially passed on.
+
+
+</para><para>
+
+
+"I'd rather have something that works this year and see it get better 
+later," says Microware's Dibble. "It would be fun to be able to deliver the 
+set-top box that would start with HDTV and go on from there, the one that 
+wouldn't deliver anything but quadraphonic sound and wouldn't work unless 
+you had broadband fiber. Maybe that will happen. Maybe if we're lucky we 
+will be the people still doing it because we were the ones who delivered the 
+relatively not-so-wonderful 
+stuff."
+
+</para>
+
+
+</section>
+</article>
+