--- Louis Schulman <louiss_at_gate.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Dec 2001 19:46:18 -0800 (PST), Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
> #I also liked the fact that the PET did not need boot disks. I saw that
> #as a major source of problems watching my friends sort through piles of
> #Apple floppies, looking for a DOS3.3 disk.
>
> They probably existed, but I don't recall ever seeing a non-bootable
> program disk for an Apple II. And data
> disks are not much use without program disks.
I remember booting up on a master and running stuff from disks
with just program files/data files in many cases (some games
you _had_ to boot). For example, I don't think the Scott Adams
text adventures came on a bootable disk from Adventure International -
why should they pay for a license, after all. I did not ever own
them for the Apple, just the PET (on cassette), so can't guarantee
what the distribution looked like.
> Of course, putting the DOS in the drive's ROM somewhat limits your
> choices as to an OS.
True, but back in those days, that wasn't a fatal limitation. Besides,
the 8-bitters didn't really have a OS, more of a structured program
loader. If all you need to do is read in executables and read/write
data files, you don't need a full OS.
-ethan
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Received on Sun Dec 09 2001 - 12:38:20 GMT