DOS/65

[handyandy]

OOPS! Thanks, Ed, I believe you're correct. They seem very similar though. My bad...

[djmitman]

HI Guys
just found this forum and I'm very interested in dos/65 - what happened with this?
If its not hosted here then where did it end up?

[Peter z80.eu]

djmitman wrote:

HI Guys
just found this forum and I'm very interested in dos/65 - what happened with this?
If its not hosted here then where did it end up?

It is still hosted at www.z80.eu/dos65.html - and if Richard wants to update something, he can write me a message and I will update the page of course, too.
You should be happy that it is hosted since many years without any interruption, and at the same place, still.
So, at least, it's still a safe place to get the software.

[BigEd]

(Welcome, Peter!)

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Not to diminish Richard Leary's work in any way, but I'm somewhat amazed there is still interest in CP/M or a clone of it. Surely the 6502 community can come up with something a little bit better.

[BigEd]

Is that helpful BDD?

[drogon]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Not to diminish Richard Leary's work in any way, but I'm somewhat amazed there is still interest in CP/M or a clone of it. Surely the 6502 community can come up with something a little bit better.

Given the context, 8-bit, 64K RAM, what is there that is actually better? (or worse!)

However the 6502 community has come up with something better - but who wants to actually use it?

At one end we have the simple "turn it on and beep -> BASIC" level, then at the other there is GekOS http://www.6502.org/users/andre/osa/index.html and viewtopic.php?t=956- which is mostly Pet/C64 based with a unixy-like interface, tcp/ip and so on, also Lunix http://lng.sourceforge.net/ which uses the GekOS library and is C64 based.

In-between that, there is DOS/65.

Who uses these?

Maybe it's because there has never really been a command-line type interface on 6502 systems - not a popular one and not one back "in the day" (that I know of).

I did write one for my Ruby system to satisfy my own needs, but that's really based on existing work done by Acorn in 1981 - the Acorn MOS (Machine Operating System) was what ran under the application (ie. BASIC, but was also other languages, word processors, spreadsheets, etc.) it did have a command-line interface but it was almost always accessed via "star" commands from the application if it had a command-line interface. The filing system is based on Apple ProDOS. RubyOS will run some Acorn software as long as it is well behaved and doesn't poke the hardware (e.g. BBC BASIC)

So Ruby boots into a CLI with a star as it's prompt and lets you type commands. In that respect it's very "cp/m" like - with a number of built-in commands and others residing on disk (with one exception, BASIC, copying it's code from the FLASH inside the ATmega host processor) Commands can be shortened using a dot and the first command is the 'cat' command which is short for catalog - ie. list disk directory, hence the Acorn centric website: stardot ...

I've posted about Ruby several times, shown a few videos - but how much interest in the OS has there been? One or 2 comments asking if I'll post the schematics... So I take that as "not much interest, really".

Maybe someone should start a new thread for what people want out of a 6502 operating system - however my fear is that people would want something that would take far too long to write or need megabytes of paged RAM (or an '816) to run, or that people are happy with "wozmon" or some other simple monitor type system.

-Gordon

[jds]

Ideally we would have something a bit Unix like for the '816, the main feature being multitasking. Ideally you'd have a MMU on a multitasking computer, but it's not completely required. You'd need quite a bit of RAM, but nothing the '816 couldn't handle. So that is at the high end, but I don't think it's useful for the 6502 as the resources are too limited (and the easiest way around those resource limits is to move to the 816).

So next step down is a single-tasking operating system, which would be nice to have. The obvious models for this are MS-DOS and CP/M. They have a lot of similarities, but what this would be would be a single task operating system with a command interpreter and hopefully some drivers. That would be a useful thing to have, and DOS/65 probably fills that role.

At the lower end we have the BASIC systems, where the BASIC interpreter is your shell, like on the Commodore-64 and Atari and Apple before ProDOS. We can probably cobble that together with EhBasic or Microsoft BASIC, a Monitor and some disk (or tape) handling commands, but it's not something that provides for any sort of application portability, and you're stuck with BASIC. There's some interesting work in Atari-DOS and it is well documented.

And there is, as above, Ruby. I suspect that the

Quote:

So I take that as "not much interest, really".

is because in this hobby the fun is in the creating, not the using, so a lot of people would rather build their own rather than use something existing. That goes right the way to development tools, there's very little standardisation in assemblers even.

Another interesting path to look at is Apple's SOS/ProDOS. SOS was a better operating system than ProDOS but its memory management was closely tied to the Apple /// hardware. The source code is out there although still under copyright.

A useful goal for this possible simple operating system would be some level of hardware independence. That was never really important for the 8-bit 6502 computers at the time, but was important in the CP/M world. Something else that would be nice to have would be a standard driver model. It would be good if we could write drivers for the simple DOS like operating system and they could also be used in the multi-tasking version.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BigEd wrote:

Is that helpful BDD?

It is...it got some discussion going.

I'm not one to live in the past when it comes to computer operating systems. Just because we are building around computing technology (the 65xx family) that came to life 45 years ago doesn't mean we have to use it like we did 45 years ago. Perhaps I'm just spoiled by some 40 years of UNIX experience and by the Lt. Kernal DOS that was developed for the C-64 and C-128, but I'm inclined to think we could do better than CP/M.

[Peter z80.eu]

An operating system is worthless until you got some useful applications as well.
For me, a BASIC interpreter (or an other computer language compiler) is one of the "killer" apps you must have to get a kind of acceptance.
If you have only a shell and some file manipulation commands, this is not enough to convince people to use it.
So I guess because DOS/65 got the BASICE Interpreter, at least one useful/important app is present.
Also, DOS/65 has some file system compatibility, which was important at least in the past.
Personally, for me, it is historical interesting, and it does *not* matter if there can be something more efficient or more sophisticated.
Rich Leary built something like a cross infrastructure for app development, because DOS/65 also runs on S100-based computers, not only on a C64.
I guess it is not constructive / makes no sense to philosophise about a much better approach, but then nothing happens later.

[BigEd]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

BigEd wrote:

Is that helpful BDD?

It is...it got some discussion going

No, you set a fire. You had a thought, and you had the chance to frame a fruitful discussion, but instead you chose to post in an existing thread.

drogon wrote:

Maybe someone should start a new thread for what people want out of a 6502 operating system

This would have been the right thing to do! Sadly, once someone (in this case BDD) has posted a critical comment in the wrong place, it takes quite some energy to redirect discussion elsewhere.

It would have been enormously better if BDD had reflected on the general question of what an operating is, and might be, and started a thoughtful thread about that.

It's a general thing: if you have a new thought, post a new thread. Especially if you are attacking the basis of an existing project, which can be demotivating and inflammatory.

[mvk]

Peter z80.eu wrote:

djmitman wrote:

HI Guys
just found this forum and I'm very interested in dos/65 - what happened with this?
If its not hosted here then where did it end up?

I found those pages earlier this year while on the hunt for a DOS for the Gigatron. I think DOS/65 is really an excellent piece of work. The documentation is extremely well done and complete. I played with it quite a bit in the c64 emulator. I haven't dismissed it for use on the Gigatron yet. The killer app for me would be to load applications from an SD card, using a familiar command line experience.

I also looked at CP/M 2.2, 86-DOS and the more modern Fuzix. But clearly Allen isn't too pleased with how the 6502-version pans out as he suggested me to build 8080 emulation first.

Regarding Ruby, the name apparently confused me until just now. For some reason I was always under the impression that it was a kind of 6502 emulator in the Ruby programming language, and therefore I never paid attention. Never had it occurred to me that the name can mean something completely different, and actually something that I might want to use! So it's on my todo list now

[drogon]

mvk wrote:

Regarding Ruby, the name apparently confused me until just now. For some reason I was always under the impression that it was a kind of 6502 emulator in the Ruby programming language, and therefore I never paid attention. Never had it occurred to me that the name can mean something completely different, and actually something that I might want to use! So it's on my todo list now

You've got my email address - I have a Gigatron - Get in-touch when ready

-Gordon

[greghol]

Mike Naberezny wrote:

RichLeary wrote:

My question to the forum is this: is there some way I could obtain some space to store for public access the software releases including documentation and the hardware design and fabrication data. information?

Absolutely. I'll contact you via email and we'll work out the details.

Did the Dos/65 version 3 source code ever get released to the public? Not sure if Mike and Rich ever worked this out. It appears that Rich stopped logging in about three years ago soon after this thread was posted. The question to as where the version 3 was raised on one of the 6502 related Facebook groups. Re-sparking my interest in the package after seeing it several years ago.

Long time lurker, Joined last year but this is my first post.

Thanks,
Greg Holdren

[plasmo]

Any news regarding DOS/65? Is version 2.15 the latest? I'm thinking about porting it to my 6502 SBC.
Bill