BEFORE telling you aboutA'tari's DOS, let's first explain for what DOS is. cassette owners It stands for Disc Operatin System, and its job is to hand|g the storage of information on new
disc_
When you store anything on cassette, you can just use CSAVE and CLOAD,and the computer willdo the rest. So why the need for an extra DOS for disc drives? The reason is one of memory. The disc handlers have lot a more work to do than the cassette handler, and therefore take up about 9k of memory. Atari decided, quite reasonably, that owners who had only a cassette recorder would be more than a little upset at losing an extra 9k for something that they would never use. Thus, DOS is stored on disc, and will automatically load into the computer when you switch on.
Atari have released three versions of DOS so far, and a fourth is now available. DOS 1.0 took up 9k of memory, and was soon replaced by DOS 2.0. This has a core of 5k which loads into memory on power—up, and a menu taking up a further 4k, which only loads when you type “DOS". DOS 2.0 has become the standard for all third-party DOS manufacturers, and was well established when Atari came along with the new 1050 drive and the all-new nos 3. This offered extra storage space, but was very poorly received because it was clumsy to use/incompatible with DOS 2.0 discs, and very
wasteful-of space. Even aspokesman from Atari admitted that it was “a bit of a dog". Thankfully, Atari have backed
.
hard |Ong "
Taklng
a
IOOk
Ata"
a?
menu will prompt you with the following one~letter commands:
A D'lfecwfy 0 f f'/res 0" d'180B. Return Basic (or cartridge). to C. fl/e/S/ from one drive to -
s new
operatlng system,
COP;er. 6/70
ANDRE
W. LLEY ' that 't s reports very frlendly and makes the most Of enhanced density's eXtra Storage space
ED.ge/ete ename ?/e{s;.} ?le 3-
'
-
"Loo/<"fi/e/s).
F-
El vt/jq/OCD/(ég/i'cy' ?re [63 10 d'130. -
|-
Initia/ise
disc
(format).
J- Make duplicate K-
COPY Of a disc-
Saveab/ockofmemory/notBasic programs}.
L. Re—load a saved memory block.
M- Run a machine code program. N- Make a MEM-SA V file (see down, Wilkinson, of to Software, Optimized Systems write a revised version of DOS 2.0 to handle enhanced density. 083 were responsible for the original Atari DOS, Basic and Assembler/Editor Cartridge, and have since upgraded these products themselves into the excellent DOS—XL, Basic-XL and Mac/65. They have also released what consider to be simply the best language available for the Atari Action! Thus, the news that 088 were doing DOS 2.5 hit the Atari community in much the same way as the music world would take the news that the Beatles were re—forming. have been using a pre-release copy of DOS 2.5 for about a month and called in Bill
I
—
I
now, and it seems to do all that’s claimed for it. It is very user-friendly without being tedious to use, completely compatible with DOS 2.0, and capable of using the extra storage space of enhanced density. The main
“VOW/O. Dupicate ?le“) 0” single drive. P- Format (sing/e dEnsity only}. DOS 2-0 OWnefs Wi” recognise all but the i331 option, ThOUQh some Of the others have been slightly altered. Drive density is automatically selected, WhiCh means that when YOU type i for Initialise disc, the computer will detect whether you have a drive capable Of enhanced density, and format the disc accordingly. Should YOU WiSh a disc to he formatted for later use on an Old 810 drive option P Wi“ format a disc in single density regardless Of the drive type. Whenever YOU load a formatted disc into a 1050 drive it will sense the type 5° discs can be swapped about as you WiShThe duplicate disc option (J) Wi” format the new disc before copying, thus ensuring an accurate COPY. no matter what density the original was —
_______’ July 7985 ATARI USER
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