[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Pascal and DOS 3.3
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013, Chuck Morris wrote:
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.
It is a Pascal filesystem, with 3 files: FPBAS.DATA (12288 stamped June 1
1979), INTBAS.DATA (12288 stamped July 26 1979) and BOOTSIM.DATA (1024
stamped June 1 1979). The disk label is BASICS.
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.
Booting the BASICS disk *also* loaded the BASIC onto the ramcard.
-uso.