There were a few that used "structured program loaders" as you call them, but
CP/M certainly was more than that. I guess there were many things that fell
between those limits.
I occasionally saw an Apple system used with one drive for the boot diskette,
one for the program, with overlays, and one or two for data. That required a
second controller at the time, though ISTR that later controllers, e.g. Rana
Systems' version supported four drives.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <erd_6502_at_yahoo.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2001 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)
>
> --- 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 - 12:56:32 GMT