Re: Apple model history?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Paul Guertin <pg@sff.net> wrote:

> CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney) wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 09 Apr 2000 12:57:50 +0900, Paul Guertin <pg@sff.net> wrote:
> > 
> > >From what I understand, ProDOS is a rewrite of the Apple III operating
> > >system SOS. Without the III (and therefore without ProDOS), the
> > >transition from floppies- to HD-based Apple II systems would have been
> > >more chaotic.
> > 
> > If they created SOS for the Apple III, what makes you think they
> > wouldn't have created it for the Apple II?
> 
> Without the SOS code to work from, writing ProDOS would have taken
> more time, and vendor-patched DOS 3.3 could have become a standard
> difficult to dislodge. Maybe.

Definitely.  It was well on the way.

> One thing about ProDOS, or rather Basic.system -- how come there is
> no equivalent of the "cd .." command, to go up one level in the
> directory hierarchy? I've always found that odd.

Me too.  It isn't too hard to do in a program (search backwards for a
slash), but seems like a rather glaring oversight.

> Almost as odd as DOS 3.3 having a two-letter command for a seldom-used
> function (FP) but a seven-letter CATALOG command.

How many times did others here type 'CATAKIG' by accident?

> > It isn't like there was something special about the Apple III hardware
> > that made designing the operating system a task that was specific to
> > only that machine.
> 
> Agreed, but before the III, did anyone at Apple see the need to write
> a sophisticated, HD-compatible operating system for the II, and act
> on it? Hm... I suppose the Apple Pascal OS might have been it.

Hardly.  The Pascal file system rapidly becomes unusable as you increase
the disk size, because it requires files to be contiguous, is limited to
70 or so files, and doesn't support subdirectories.

They had to implement a horrible hack involving creating lots of small
volumes to get Pascal working usefully with the 5 MB ProFile drive.

Apple got it right with Apple /// Pascal, since it ran under SOS, with
corresponding improvements to all the above details.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P O Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand