A/ROSE

A/ROSE
DeveloperApple Computer
OS family
Working stateHistoric
Initial releaseFebruary 1988; 36 years ago (1988-02)
PlatformsMacintosh Coprocessor Platform for Macintosh (Motorola 68000)

A/ROSE (Apple Real-time Operating System Environment) is a small embedded operating system that runs on Apple Computer's "Macintosh Coprocessor Platform", an expansion card for the Macintosh.

The idea was to offer a single "overdesigned" hardware platform on which third-party vendors could build practically any product, reducing the otherwise heavy workload of developing a NuBus-based expansion card. However, the MCP cards were expensive, limiting the appeal of the concept. A/ROSE had very little use, apparently limited solely to Apple's own networking cards for serial I/O, Ethernet, Token Ring, and Twinax.[1] GreenSpring Computers developed the RM1260, which is an IndustryPack (IP) carrier card with a 68000 CPU running A/ROSE and is intended for the data acquisition market.

  1. ^ Maurer, Joseph. "Inside the Macintosh Coprocessor Platform and A/ROSE". MacTech. Retrieved November 25, 2023.