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Device Operating System #0 & #1
Device Operating System 19 September 1995
Segement 0:SYSTEM INITIALIZATION & OVERLAY AREA
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This area is reserved for overlays to provide emulation for
the Tandy Color Computer's, Apple II's, Commodore's, and
TI's. A seperate area will be provided for emulation of the
Atari St, Amiga, and Macintosh systems. CPM (MPM) and UNIX
(XENIX) will not generally need this area. However, systems
not yet supported or mentioned, such as the TRS80 MODEL
III/4 series (or the CBM/PET) will still have some kind of
bridge or stepping stone to allow access to the features of
this DOS. So that if the demand or need arises, emulators
will be developed. Imagine a TRS80 MODEL 4 with color
graphics! Another application for this area would be an
in-house developed, custom, proprietary system, such as for
security purposes.
The segments in this operating system are in sixteen 64K
blocks for a total of 1M operating system memory. The
blocks can be expanded as necessary to provide room for
growth and enhancements. The main idea for this segment is
to provide a cross-platform standard or compatability where
needed or when demanded. As mentioned earlier, one example
would be a TRS80 MODEL 4 with color graphics, another would
be better sound for the Tandy Color Computer, and still
another would be more available free RAM for a VIC20. All
this WITHOUT losing ANY compatabillity at all with your
already pre-existing software library. Further examples
will be provided in future segment discusssions. Would a
cross-platform cartridge adapter be necessary?
Undoubtedly, there are probably almost as many non-IBM's out
there (total) as there are IBM compatable systems. Why let
all that technology go to waste?
It can be done. Most of the systems mentioned had OS ROMs
consisting of at least 32K max. So, adapting these
operating systems will be difficult at best, but NOT
impossible.
Segement 1:EXTENDED MEMORY UNIT-EXTENDED LOGIC UNIT or
XMU/XLU
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This area provides the necessary means of converting from
one proprietary or custom screen/keyboard code (ASCII) to
another. Such as from PETSCII (Commodore) to ATASCII
(Atari). As well as a means for BASIC number crunching or
floating point arithmetic. If possible, direct mainframe
support will be provided, such as to and from EBCDIC. This
area also controls task swapping (Multitasking), shadow
programs (TSR's), and memory management (such as psuedo-bank
switching). It also provides the means for growth and
enhancements for the other segments.
Cheyenne Area Orphaned Systems or Ch.A.O.S.
Jeffrey Wood (WOODZY)
813 Covered Wagon Drive
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82007-1671