Re: What is PRODOS?

[John_L._Graham@adbbs.antioch.edu (John L. Graham)]

Hmmm, I hope I get this right...

ProDOS (Professional Disk Operating System) replaced the earlier DOS 3.3,
which I've often seen refered to as Apple DOS to differ it from Microsoft
DOS. DOS and ProDOS bear very little ressemblence to each other other than
the fact they're both disk operating systems. DOS was designed around
relatively small mass storage devices (i.e., 140 kb floppies) and had a flat
filing system, ProDOS was designed to work with much larger mass storage
devices (up to 32 Mb per device) and has a two-dimensional directory
structure. If'n I recall right DOS has numerous safe-guards designed to help
it cope with unreliable hardware and media common in the early days of
floppies that slowed it way down (a lot of this was later removed in a Beagle
Bros DOS variant called Pronto DOS). ProDOS was developed after hardware and
media were pretty mature and is a much faster system with respect to disk
I/O. As for BinScii, I don't recall ever seeing a version of BinScii that ran
under DOS, but that doesn;t mean there isn't one.

Have fun!

John