Re: Pascal and DOS 3.3

[Chuck Morris <chuckwmorris@gmail.com>]

When I bought my Apple II+ with 2 Disk II drives and the language system card, the BASICS disk was included.  I believe it was included as part of the DOS 3.3 software package, if I recall correctly.  The BASICS disk served only one function - it served as a pre-boot disk for 13 sector (DOS 3.2) disks.  If I remember correctly, it was a USCD Pascal formatted disk.  As mmphosis said, USCD Pascal had its own disk format, which was a 16 sector format.

Quite honestly, I've never understood why the disk was called BASICS in the first place, as it had nothing to do with making either Applesoft or Integer BASIC available.  Booting the DOS 3.3 system master diskette with a language card installed would autoload whichever of those flavors of BASIC that was not ROM resident into the language card, allowing the user to switch from one to the other via the INT and FP commands.