A2DEH@MIT-MC.ARPA (09/24/84)
From: "Donald E. Hopkins" <A2DEH@MIT-MC.ARPA> Writing your own RAMDisk driver is quite simple under ProDOS. The ProDOS Technical Manual gives you all the documentation you need to write and install all sorts of device drivers. It's quite worth the money at $25, and even comes with a disk with a program that lets you play around with all of ProDOS calls. On the other hand, Apple's $40 ProDOS upgrade kit, in my opinion, is not worth the money. You get one of those horribly obnoxious "Apple //e style" manuals with those nasty flaps on the back cover whose only purpose is to get in the way, a ProDOS User's disk, and a whole sheath of papers to sign and send in. The manual does nothing but document the self-documenting programs that come on the ProDOS User's disk. It doesn't say anything about any of the BASIC.SYSTEM commands, or any of the nice features of ProDOS. (The BASIC.SYSTEM program is what is loaded in when you are in Applesoft. It's the BASIC/ProDOS interface, and supports most of the DOS 3.3 commands, (except for things like INT, FP, MAXFILES, etc...) plus a bunch of new ProDOS ones. (like FLUSH, PREFIX, CAT, etc...)) I object to the senseless slaughter off innocent trees that goes on to publish that manual. I've heard that Apple has a ProDOS BASIC Programmer's Reference manual out. I haven't seen it, and I don't know how much it costs, but I think that they should include it with the ProDOS upgrade instead of the dreadful ProDOS User's Manual. -Don