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Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. disk operating system (specifically) and disk operating system (generically), most often abbreviated as DOS, refer to operating system software used in most computers for the management of storage devices and the information on them (e. ...
An Atari 800XL, one of the most popular machines in the series. ...
Getting the Atari computer to access a disk drive required operating system extensions to be loaded into the computer. These extensions to the operating system added the disk handler and other file management features. Disk storage is a group of data storage mechanisms for computers; data are transferred to planar surfaces or disks for temporary or permanent storage. ...
An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
The most important extension was the disk handler. In Atari DOS 2.0, this was the File Management System, or FMS. The FMS was an implementation of a File system that loaded from a floppy disk. This meant additional memory was needed to run with DOS loaded, at least 32K RAM. In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ...
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a ring of thin, flexible (i. ...
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A four-megabyte RAM hiyaacard for the VAX 8600 computer (circa 1986). ...
Image File history File links Ataridos-2. ...
Image File history File links Ataridos-2. ...
Versions of Atari DOS There were several versions of Atari DOS available.
DOS 1.0 The first version of DOS from Atari, all commands were accessible from the menu only. Came with the 810 disk-drives. Entirely memory resident. This made it fast, but took away memory space. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
DOS 2.0 - Also known as DISK OPERATING SYSTEM II VERSION 2.0S
The second (and more popular) version of DOS from Atari. Came with the 810 disk-drives and some early 1050 disk-drives. This is considered to be the lowest common denominator for ATARI DOSses, as any Atari-compatible disk-drive and read a disk formatted with DOS 2.0S. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
DOS 2.0S consisted of DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS. DOS.SYS was loaded into memory, DUP.SYS contained the disk utilities and was loaded only when the user exited to DOS.
In addition to bug fixes, DOS 2.0S featured improved NOTE/POINT support and the ability to automatically run an Atari executable file if it was named AUTORUN.SYS. Since user memory was erased when DUP.SYS was loaded, an option to create a MEM.SAV file was added. This stored user memory in a temporary file (MEM.SAV) and restored it after DUP.SYS was unloaded. The previous menu option from DOS 1.0, N. DEFINE DEVICE, was replaced with N. CREATE MEM.SAV in DOS 2.0S.
Version 2.0S was for single-density disks, 2.0D was for double-density disks. 2.0D was for the 815 Dual Disk Drive. Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
DOS 3.0 A new version of DOS that came bundled with the new 1050 disk-drives from Atari. This made use of the new Enhanced Density capability (referred to by Atari as Dual Density) offered by the 1050. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
By organizing sectors into blocks, Atari was anticipating larger capacity floppy disks, but this resulted in incompatibility with DOS 2.0S. Files converted to DOS 3 could not be converted back to DOS 2.0. A sector is a part of a whole. ...
Due to complaints and bugs, Atari released DOS 2.5. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
DOS 2.5 - Also known as DISK OPERATING SYSTEM II VERSION 2.5
After listening to complaints by their customers, Atari Released an improved version of their previous DOS. This allowed the use of Enhanced Density disks, and there was a utility to read DOS 3 disks. An additional option was added to the menu (P. FORMAT SINGLE) to format single-density disks. DOS 2.5 was shipped with 1050 disk drives and some early XF551 disk-drives. For the concept Atari (当ãŸã‚Š) in the board game of Go, see Atari (go term). ...
Included utilities were DISKFIX.COM, COPY32.COM, SETUP.COM and RAMDISK.COM.
DOS XE - Codename during production: ADOS
When the Atari XF551 drive came out, not only was it Atari's first drive that could read double-density disks, it was also double sided. So support was added in the DOS for double-density and double-sided disks. Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
A new proprietary file format made DOS XE incompatible with DOS 2.0S or DOS 2.5. A separate utility was needed for reading older 2.0 files.
Only XL/XE computers were supported, DOS XE did not work with the older 400/800 computers.
DOS XE also supported date-stamping of files, sub-directories and burst I/O for the XF551 drive.
Last DOS made by Atari for the Atari 8-bit family. An Atari 800XL, one of the most popular machines in the series. ...
DOS 4.0 - Codename during production: QDOS
Designed for the never-released 1450XLD, the rights were returned to the author who placed it in the public-domain. It was later published by ANTIC Software. Using blocks instead of sectors, it supported single, double, enhanced and double-sided drives. Not compatible with DOS 2 or 3 disks but could read files from them. Did not automatically switch densities, it was necessary to go to the menu and manually select the correct density. ANTIC Software was the name of the software company founded by Gary Yost of ANTIC, a magazine for the Atari 8-bit computers. ...
Written by Michael Barall.
Third-party DOS Programs Many of these DOSses were released by manufacturers of third party drives, anyone who made drive-modifications, or anyone who was dis-satisfied with the available DOSses. Often, these DOSses could read disks in higher densities, and could set the drive to read disks faster (using Warp Speed or Ultra-Speed techniques). Most of these DOSses (except Sparta DOS) were DOS 2.0 compatible.
SmartDOS Menu driven DOS that was compatible with DOS 2.0. Among the first third-party DOS programs to support double-density drives. Atari DOS, (often just known as DOS), was the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. ...
Many enhancements including sector copying and verifying, speed checking, turning on/off file verifying and drive reconfiguration.
Written by John Chenoweth and Ron Beiber.
OS/A+ and DOS XL DOS produced by Optimized Systems Software. Compatible with DOS 2.0 - Allowed the use of Double Density floppies. Unlike most ATARI DOSses, this used a command line instead of a menu. DOS XL provided a menu program in addition to the command line. Optimized Systems Software (OSS) was a small company producing operating systems and programming languages for the Atari 8-bit and Apple II computer families. ...
DOS XL was a Disk Operating System (DOS) written by Paul Laughton, Mark Rose, Bill Wilkinson and Mike Peters and produced by Optimized Systems Software (OSS) for Atari 8-bit microcomputers. ...
Super DOS This DOS could read SS/ED/DD/DS disks, and made use of all known methods of speeding up disk-reads supported by the various 3rd party drive-manufacturers.
TopDOS Menu driven DOS with enhanced features. Sorts disk directory listings and can set display options. File directory can be compressed. Can display deleted files and undelete them. Some advanced features required a proprietary TOPDOS format.
Published by Eclipse Software.
MyDOS This DOS adds the ability to use sub-directories, and supports hard-drives.
Published by Wordmark Systems, includes complete source code.
SpartaDOS This DOS used a command-line interface. Was not compatible with DOS 2.0, but could read DOS 2.0 disks. Supports subdirectories and hard drives being capable of handling filesystems sized up to 16 MB. Included the capability to create primitive batch files. There was also a more sophisticated version called SpartaDOS X, which strongly resembles MS-DOS in its look and feel.
BW-DOS A SpartaDOS compatible DOS released many years later.
Freeware by Jiří Bernasek.
Technical details
Disk Formats A number of different formats existed for Atari disks. The standard Atari single-sided, single-density disk had 720 sectors divided into 40 tracks. After formatting, 707 sectors were free. Each 128 byte sector used the last 3 bytes for housekeeping data (bytes used, file number, next sector), leaving 125 bytes for data. Formatting a hard drive using MS-DOS Disk formatting is the only process of preparing a hard disk or other storage medium for use with the file system (FAT, NTFS, UFS, etc. ...
- Single-Sided, Single-Density: 40 tracks with 18 sectors per track, 128 bytes per sector. 90K capacity.
- Single-Sided, Double-Density: 40 tracks with 18 sectors per track, 256 bytes per sector. 180K capacity.
- Single-Sided, Enhanced-Density: 40 tracks with 26 sectors per track, 128 bytes per sector. 127K capacity.
- Double-Sided, Double-Density: 80 tracks (40 tracks per side) with 18 sectors per track, 256 bytes per sector. 360K capacity.
References
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