Games - DOS XL

	Games - DOS XL

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. It was designed to be compatible with Atari DOS which came shipped with Atari's disk-drives.

Description

A direct descendant of OS/A+, DOS XL provided additional features to Atari's equipped with floppy disk drives. These included single and double density support, a command-line mode (called the command processor or CP), a menu mode (an executable loaded in memory), batch file support, and support for XL extended memory and OSS SuperCartridge banked memory. Later versions included Axlon RamDisk support, Mosaic RamDisk support, BIT-3 support and BUG/65.

Several Disk Drive manufacturers shipped DOS XL with their drives, including Trak, Percom, Astra, Indus, Amdek and Rana.

DOS XL came in two versions, 2.20 and 2.30 (2.20 users had to pay $20 to upgrade to 2.30). The last version was 2.30P. DOS XL originally sold for $30, but the price later increased to $39.

The manual for DOS XL was a subset of OS/A+. OSS consided the manual an "addendum" to OS/A+. Over 150+ pages, it was bound at the spine, not in loose-leaf form like the OS/A+ manual.

Commands

Menu Commands

C - Copy Files P - Protect Files D - Duplicate Disk Q - Quit to DOS XL E - Erase Files R - Rename File F - Files on Disk S - Save Binary G - Go to Address T - To Cartridge I - Initialize Disk U - Unprotect Files L - Load Binary X - Xtended Command

Intrinsic Commands

@ - Begins execution of a batch file CAR - Runs Cartridge Dn: - Changes default drive DIR - Directory END - Tells DOS XL to stop batch execution (used in a batch file) ERA - Erase file(s) LOA - Load file(s) in memory NOS - NO Screen. Turns off command echo to screen PRO - Protect. Enables write-protect on file(s) REM - REMark. Used for user remarks in batch files REN - REName. Renames file(s) RUN - Jumps to run address SAV - Saves a portion of memory to disk SCR - Enables commands to be echoed to screen (for batch files) TYP - Displays ASCII or ATASCII text files to screen UNP - Turns off write-protect on file(s)

Extrinsic Commands

C65 DUPDBL MENU VERIFY CLRDSK DUPDSK NOVERIFY CONFIG INIT RS232 COPY INITDBL RS232FIX DO MAC65 SDCOPY

BASIC Extended Commands

CLOSE NOTE PROTECT (XIO 35) ENTER OPEN UNPROTECT (XIO 36) GET POINT RENAME (XIO 32) INPUT PRINT ERASE (XIO 33) LIST PUT LOAD SAVE

Patch

Version 2.30P was a newer version to 2.30 to fix two problems.

In previous versions of DOS XL, if you initialized a disk from the menu, the disk would not boot unless the file MENU.COM was on the disk. To alleviate this problem, type Q to quit the menu. Then type INIT or INITDBL from the command processor. Note: everything on the menu can be done manually from the command processor.
If you have a multidrive system and you initialized a disk in a drive other than one, when booted, the disk will always come up with the number of the drive on which it was initialized. To prevent this problem, use D1: as the destination drive.

The patch for DOS XL 2.30 to make it a 2.30P: 10 XIO 36,#1,0,0,"D:DOS.SYS" : REM unprotect file 20 OPEN #1,12,0,"D:DOS.SYS" 30 READ CNT:IF CNT=0 THEN GOTO 300 40 READ START 50 FOR ADDR=START TO START+CNT-1 60 READ BYTE:POKE ADDR,BYTE 70 NEXT ADDR 80 GOTO 30 200 DATA 3,5481,32,1,21 210 DATA 27,5377,141,217,22,169,16 220 DATA 141,23,22,,169,23,141,24,22 230 DATA 169,49,141,30,22,169,64,133 240 DATA 12, 169,21,133,13,96 250 DATA 0 300 CLOSE #1 310 END

Aftermath

Plans for DOS XL 4 were scrapped due to low demand and competition. OSS reissued OS/A+ 4.1, mainly for double-sided support.

DOS XL, along with other OSS products, became part of ICD's catalog of Atari products in January 1988. However, DOS XL was dropped in favor of ICD's SpartaDOS.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for DOS XL ]

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