Re: ProDOS ?

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

Simon Biber wrote:

> No, unfortunately the basic Apple II system is not able to read or write
> disks without loading a DOS. The ROM on the disk controller card is able to
> load the boot sector of a disk into memory and start running it. This is how
> most DOSes are loaded on the Apple II.
>
> ProDOS provides two interfaces to the system for manipulating disks and
> files. The Machine Language Interface (MLI) is used by programmers and
> provides a range of file services including loading, saving, renaming,
> deleting, etc. The MLI can only be used when programming in assembly or
> machine code.
>
> The interface you're more likely to use is in the program BASIC.SYSTEM,

I would add the ProDOS utilities disk as well, which has a menu based interface
to utilities for formatting disks, copying files/disk, verifying disks, etc.

Roy

> and
> it lets you type commands in at the AppleSoft Basic prompt, that is a right
> bracket "]". Some commands are
> LOAD file
> SAVE file
> CAT [path]
> CATALOG [path]
> DELETE file
> RENAME oldname,newname
>
> You would use ProDOS for saving your files to disks and getting them back
> again.
>
> Simon.