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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.

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.

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.

Versions of Atari DOS

There were several versions of Atari DOS available.

DOS 1.0

The first version of DOS from Atari. Came with the 810 disk-drives. Entirely memory resident. This made it fast, but took away memory space.

DOS 2.0

The second (and probably the most widely used) 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 2.0

Came in two parts, DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS. Only DOS.SYS was loaded in memory, DUP.SYS was loaded only when the user exited to DOS.

2.0S was for single-density disks, 2.0D was for double-density disks. 2.0D was for the 815 Dual Disk Drive.

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.

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.

Due to complaints and bugs, Atari released DOS 2.5.

DOS 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. DOS 2.5 was shipped with 1050 disk drives and some early XF551 disk-drives.

DOS XE

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.

A new proprietary file format made DOS XE incompatible with DOS 2.0 or 2.5. A separate function was needed for reading older 2.0 files.

DOS XE also supported date-stamping of files, sub-directories and high speed I/O for the XF551 drive.

DOS 4.0

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.

Codename during production was QDOS. 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.

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.

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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Atari DOS ]

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