[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Once again musing about "DOS 3.3 for ProDOS"
On 12/13/2011 12:49 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote:
This time I'm armed with a basic understanding of the ProDOS API, but
still don't understand the inner workings of DOS.
The inner workings of DOS were always hazy to a number of folks. Factor
in the myriad hacks by the community and DOS was a jumble of routines
which could give most anyone a headache. However, most INTEGER DOS
programs don't require such intricate details about DOS they require an
understanding of what the programmer was attempting to accomplish within
the confines of DOS. Given the flexibility of ProDOS 8 I suspect most
Apple DOS programs could be ported.
I've thought of a few things which would be potentially viable with such
a system: INTBASIC (lomem version) and a number of small BASIC programs
with chargens (many of them break under ProDOS). Mostly this is
advantageous to people with higher capacity disk drives.
Integer BASIC has often been desired by the II's BASIC programming
fans.I myself have toyed with the idea several times. I could never
justify the effort though as there are other alternatives available. For
instance, there is APEX an integer based interpreted language with an
adjustable base which allowed for a broad range of values on a variable
sized base. Alternately, ZBASIC could be configured for use as an
integer only environment. Being both compiler and interpreter it offers
some interesting possibilities.
Please don't misunderstand, I applaud your efforts and should you make
such an interpreter I expect to be among the first in line to acquire a
copy. I mostly wanted to point out that most of those old gems might be
better off if the effort were put directly into porting them instead.
The source of PDOS RDOS tells me what I need to know about interfacing
on a basic (lol) level to ProDOS but I haven't seen something similar
for DOS 3.3. I am thinking I will want to merely patch out the file
manager and RWTS, and replace INIT with BYE. Doing the former is the
most difficult.
The thing is, DOS wasn't meant to be interfaced with. It was a means to
an end. A simple method created to allow BASIC programmers access to the
floppy disk storage medium. The trick was to make the DOS commands feel
like part of the actual BASIC environment. Well, that's just me waxing
philosophical about it. Perhaps there will be some technical posts about
how (or not) it can be done.
Cheers
Mike T