I don't know anything about the EARLIEST history of the MS-DOS FAT, but
the later stuff was fairly well documented. Who has enough first hand
knowledge to check the accuracy?
Microsoft produced some "Stand-Alone BASIC" systems. They had file IO,
and used a a directory structure that was, in principle, similar to that
of MS-DOS, although they subscribed to the seek center fallacy of putting
the directory on a track approximately halfway towards the center. What
prior operating systems used a linked list for allocation management?
The best known of the "Stand-Alone BASIC"s is the Radio Shack Color
Computer. I have dealt with disks from the "Stand-Alone Basic" from Coco,
NEC (8001, 8801) and Okidata (used in Russia!) The "MS-DOS Encyclopedia"
explicitly mentions NCR. I have never seen a disk from that. Does anyone
know the model, or could that have been a misprint for NEC??
Supposedly, Tim Patterson found out about the MS Stand-Alone BASIC while
they (Seattle Computer Products) were sharing a booth with MS at a show
(West Coast Computer Faire?) He thought that the linked list for storage
management was really neat.
When he wrote Q-DOS (later MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and 86-DOS) as a placeholder
while waiting for CP/M-86 to come out, he used the FAT. When MS bought
Q-DOS, they were buying a system that was mostly a copy of CP/M, but with
a directory structure that had been copied from earlier MS products.
--
Fred Cisin cisin_at_xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2210 Sixth St. (510) 644-9366
Berkeley, CA 94710-2219
Received on Tue Jan 12 1999 - 18:04:47 GMT