Can you Name all the DOS's for the 8bit ??

[LYNXGUY]

The ones I remember and used are. . . . .

 

 

DOS XL

DOS 2

DOS 2.5

DOS 3

RANA SMART DOS

[miker]

Here are some more:

 

MyDos (there are some versions)

SuperDOS (my favourite DOS in the past )

BiboDOS (hmm, i have one (v. 7.0) in my CA-2001 ROM )

DOS II+ (with all variations - including the RAMcart versions)

TopDOS (with very strange filesystem - 128 files in DD)

FlashDOS (Polish DOS for use with Flash-Turbo, not very popular disk drive mod.)

 

and last but not least - SpartaDOS & SpartaDOS X

 

there were some more - but i just don't remember...

[_Fandal_]

I can also add:

 

Mach DOS

Turbo DOS

Super DOS

Rambo DOS

BeWe DOS

DOS XE

Howfen DOS

Multi DOS

 

and many hacks of DOS 2.5, like Rainbow DOS...

 

F.

[+davidcalgary29]

And let's not forget Atari's original DOS for the 810.

[kevin242]

there was something called OSS DOS which came with Percom drives

back in the day as well... I think there was a 2nd version called OSS+

too.

[Nukey Shay]

Does this include "unofficial" Dos as well? Like Dos 2.5f (Dos 2.5 with a sector copier and drive speed indicator thrown in)?

[kevin242]

yea and what about dos 2.6? that was nother unoffiical one, plus I cant

remember the name, but what was the one that said "My commands

are your wishes?"

 

 

 

 

 

---Kevin

[Jeff Lodoen]

Atari made a DOS 4 but didn't release it. Antic sold it in their catalog. Supposed to replace DOS 3, it was incompatible with 2 & 3. Good idea!

Whoever finally decided to make 2.5 was a genius.

 

I read that DOS3 used 1k sectors (or pseudo sectors), is that true?

 

Why wasn't the 1050 true DD anyway?

[ZylonBane]

Wasn't there a DOS 2.0d that supported double-density sectors?

 

Or maybe not.

[Nukey Shay]

Yup...there was. IIRC that is where the S in 2.0S came from.

DOS II Version 2.0D was shipped with the rare Atari 815 Dual Disk Drive.  Supports double-density disk drives; also supports single-density disk drives.  The DOS 2.0D disk is labeled: Atari 815 Master Diskette (CX8201).

[drac030]

I read that DOS3 used 1k sectors (or pseudo sectors), is that true?

 

Yes. 8 sectors, 128 bytes each, per one block; more like a cluster actually. This finally allowed to use all the 1040 sectors on 1050 dual density disks.

 

However, I have no detailed description of DOS 3 filesystem, and I don't have any information on DOS 4 filesystem - does anyone know an URL?

[Jeff Lodoen]

I read that DOS3 used 1k sectors (or pseudo sectors), is that true?

 

Yes. 8 sectors, 128 bytes each, per one block; more like a cluster actually. This finally allowed to use all the 1040 sectors on 1050 dual density disks.

 

What does that mean in practice?

 

I never used DOS 3, I'm going by this quote from Antic, July 1985:

 

"The DOS 3.0 file management is a more serious flaw. It stores files in "blocks" of 1024 bytes as opposed to the DOS 2 (and compatibles') 128 byte "sectors." This can be wastefully inefficient. If you save a file of 1025 bytes (one block plus one byte), DOS 3 will save it as 2 blocks, wasting 1023 bytes of disk space!"

[Curt Vendel]

Just Atari alone:

 

Don't forget Dos 2.6f (one of the best 2.0 DOS's IMHO)

Dos 2.9

 

Atari DOS 2.0d for the Atari 815's

 

Dos 3.0 (atari internal version, far better then the DOS that was released)

 

QDos or DOS 4 which was done by Miek Barrall at Atari, but somehow end up being published by Antic... not sure how that one happened, same thing happened to Lizard which was the ultimate Atari telecom program which then was released as Chameleon 4.03 by Antic, again go figure...

 

DOS XL, one of my Favorites

RDOS, very good DOS for getting extra usable memory, same with DOS XL if you used it with a Basic XL cart you got 4k of extra space.

 

MyDOS of all shapes and flavors

 

SpartaDOS and SpartaDOS X (cart)

 

 

and there are a whole bunch more... MyDos is my personal favorite and I like DOS 2.5 also, I thought Atari did a superb job on 2.5, with the built in Autoexec modifications, Drive #'s, 850 handler and such, well done DOS indeed.

 

 

 

Curt

[Goochman]

Wasnt there a RANADos? I remember another I liked with a darker blue background menu system that was SS/DD compatible.

[drac030]

Yes. 8 sectors, 128 bytes each, per one block; more like a cluster actually. This finally allowed to use all the 1040 sectors on 1050 dual density disks.

 

What does that mean in practice?

 

I never used DOS 3, I'm going by this quote from Antic, July 1985:

 

"The DOS 3.0 file management is a more serious flaw. It stores files in "blocks" of 1024 bytes as opposed to the DOS 2 (and compatibles') 128 byte "sectors." This can be wastefully inefficient. If you save a file of 1025 bytes (one block plus one byte), DOS 3 will save it as 2 blocks, wasting 1023 bytes of disk space!"

 

Well, the text you quote is correct: "it CAN BE wastefully inefficient". Probably, for short files it just is wastefully inefficient, however, I guess that DOS 3.0, at the other hand, allows you to use the 16 data sectors which are not accessible under DOS 2.5

 

The rest depends on the actual filesystem used. I don't know anything about the DOS 3.0, but the DOS 2.0 FS can be wastefully inefficient (space-wise) too. On a diskette you get 1040 sectors, 128 bytes each, however, about 3k of this capacity is taken by sector links, 2k you loose because the FS is only capable to map 1024 sectors, yet 1 k is taken by fixed-size directory, not to mention the VTOC and boot sectors. The diskette's capacity is 130k, but you can store only 123k of your data on it; ideally, that is, or in one file. Under DOS 3.0 you could probably save a file few kB longer, to the same diskette.

 

The DOS 2.0 FS may perform well with short files, but comparing with SpartaDOS FS it is probably more wasteful for long files. On DOS 2.5 this is not a problem, because it is by design limited to small media. However, MyDOS continues the same filesystem concept, with 3-byte sector link. Despite the fact, that this linkage goes only one direction (from the begin of the file to the end, but there's no way back), it takes more place than on SpartaDOS filesystem, where the sector link is 2-byte long (and it goes both directions).

 

So imagine a file that is 8 MB long (perfectly possible on a 16 MB disk, both MyDOS and SpartaDOS can do this). 8 MB is

8388608 bytes.

 

On SpartaDOS FS it will take 32768 data sectors. Apart of this, the file map will take additional 66580 bytes, i.e. 261 sectors. The total of allocated space is 33029 sectors, i.e. 8257,25 kilobytes. Out of that, 8192 kilobytes, i.e. 99,21 %, is the actual data.

 

On MyDOS the file will be mapped to 33157 sectors, i.e. 8289,25 kilobytes; out of that 98,82% is the actual data. This is exactly 32 kB, i.e. 128 sectors, more than on SpartaDOS.

 

Not to mention such a detail, that under MyDOS such a big file is a nonsense, because you do not have any possibility to randomly access it; to read the last byte, you have simply to read the entire file, 8 MB of data. With fastest hard drive known to me you can attach to the Atari, you could do such a "seek" in about 3 min. (yes, three minutes). At the other hand, SpartaDOS can seek from the begin of the file to the end and back (i.e. 16 MB seek), in 3-4 seconds.

 

At the other hand, 1-byte file saved by MyDOS takes 1 sector, and 2 sectors on SpartaDOS (I have no idea, how much sectors allocates MyDOS for a zero-length file, Sparta allocates two IIRC). 254-byte file on SpartaDOS still takes 2 sectors, and so does on MyDOS. 257-byte file still takes 2 sectors on MyDOS, but three on Sparta. And so on - until around 21k (21759 bytes, if I calculate correctly), at what file size the SpartaDOS filesystem starts to be less wasteful than MyDOS.

[+Stephen]

Wow drac030 - that's quite an in-depth analysis of the various file systems. I'm amazed at what I am learning about the little Ataris, 23 years after I got my 1st 400!

 

Stephen Anderson