Timeline for Does "Disk Operating System" imply that there was a "non-disk" Operating System?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 4, 2020 at 2:50 | comment | added | hippietrail | @hobbs: I'm guessing so (-: | |
| Jun 4, 2020 at 2:46 | comment | added | hobbs | @hippietrail oh, is that where the traffic came from? :) | |
| Jun 4, 2020 at 2:04 | comment | added | hippietrail | See also Would a “disk operating systems” tag be beneficial? | |
| Jun 3, 2020 at 17:21 | history | edited | hobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 6 characters in body
|
| Mar 7, 2017 at 21:58 | comment | added | mschaef |
@Harper Yes... the base PC had a cassette port, along with a relay for controlling the cassette motor. (With corresponding BASIC command MOTOR for setting the relay on and off). I think it mostly got used as a single digital output on floppy-equipped machines, and was dropped as early as the PC XT, IIRC.
|
|
| Mar 6, 2017 at 21:17 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @MichaelKjörling I remember the floppy disk controller was notably huge; Not just more than the 8 chips on the Apple II floppy controller... damn near more chips than the Apple II. Total by-the-book design, not one single compromise for economy of hardware. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 21:08 | comment | added | user | @Harper Yes, every 5150 had some sort of storage capability. Whether you hooked up a FDD (I suspect that required a separate controller card, as there probably was no FDC on the motherboard) or a casette tape recorder was up to you. Even without a casette tape recorder and with no FDD, though, you could still turn the machine on and it would boot into ROM BASIC where you could type away; similar to other systems of its day. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 21:01 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @MichaelKjörling I vaguely remember the 5150 had cassette deck I/O, so every base PC had something. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 20:56 | comment | added | user | @Harper Indeed; the original IBM 5150 could be had with 16 KiB RAM and no storage, though 64 KiB with at least one floppy disk drive was probably a more common configuration. (One or two 5.25" FDDs was an optional, though common, accessory.) Wikipedia puts the BASIC at "over 50 kB"; having all that in RAM would have left very little for user programs, and on-demand loading (while almost certainly technically possible even with the hardware of the 5150; command.com did it) would have been anything but high performance. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 18:15 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | A big reason BASIC was in ROM is the base machine had very little RAM. There simply wasn't room in RAM for a BASIC interpreter and also any useful work. | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 21:35 | comment | added | Dronz | Yes, and there were also alternative DOS one could use, for example if you bought an Indus brand disk drive for your Atari, it came with disks for their version of DOS, which you could use instead of the Atari DOS. It didn't change the computer's OS or way if worked for other purposes, but the disk commands and UI were different compared to using Atari DOS (which also had a few versions). | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 19:28 | history | edited | hobbs | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 42 characters in body
|
| Mar 5, 2017 at 18:34 | comment | added | Robert Columbia | Great answer. Machines like the Apple //, the 1981 IBM PC, and several 8-bit Atari boxes could boot right to BASIC. For the Apple and Atari, BASIC was effectively the command prompt. Booting from Apple or Atari DOS added disk access hooks to BASIC so you could load from and save to disk. | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 6:54 | history | answered | hobbs | CC BY-SA 3.0 |