mfolivo@sactoh0.sac.ca.us (Mark Newton John) (05/03/91)
I want to correct one inaccuracy. The DOS that was designed for the
1450XLD was not DOS 4, but DOS 3.
I consider myself an expert, being about the last person in the
Western Hemisphere that used DOS 3 instead of SpartaDOS. (reasons
I'll not go into here...) Then I got an ST, but I digress.
The 1450XLD was a huge XL, with a double-sided (enhanced)double
density drive built in, with an expansion bay for a second drive.
It had a metal case, so you could put a monitor on top of it. If
this is sounding like an Apple III, you're not too far off. Both
were dogs, although a 1450XLD would command a far greater price
than any Apple III, if you can even FIND an XLD. But I digress
again.
DOS 3 was a wierd one alright, but in trying to remain compatible
with all the single sided drives, DOS 3 and the XLD did things the
absolute wierdest way.
Since the XLD had a double-sided (DS) drive, each side of the disk
was treated like a separate drive. Yes, with DOS 3 and your XLD,
your single, built in drive was actually D1: and D2:. The reverse
side had it's own directory. So if you had two DS drives in your
XLD, then you had D1: to D4:. Expanding on that, DOS 3 supported 8
drives like DOS 2 did.
I suppose you could have 8 drives, if Atari ever released a 1055
(?) DS drive. Or one could have an XLD with two drives, and
daisychain 4 1050s...
The internal XLD drives were alot faster, as they were parallel,
not serial like the 810/1050 drives.
Myself, I started with DOS 2, then DOS 3, tried DOS 2.5 then went
back to DOS 3. I got DOS 4, but unless you have three drives, it
was a pain. Actually, DOS 3 works better with three drives, D1: for
the system disk, and 2 and 3 for files and copying.
--
the good guys! Sakura-mendo, CA
Internet: mfolivo@sactoh0.SAC.CA.USglover@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Eric Glover) (05/03/91)
Dont for get the 1400, which never made it out of Atari warehouses. The 1400 was essentially a big brother to the 1200 and end the end atari even used the 1400 Xl cases they had made and installed 1200 motherboards and sold them as 1200, a friend of mine has such a 1200 with the part ID for the 1400. BTW Im still using DOS 3. Please. No Laughing. Thanks to Everyone who responded to my 2 posts. I hope to keep you informed of developments. Glover A man seriously seeking an Action! cart and Utils.
wolfram@cip-s02.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Wolfram Roesler) (05/22/91)
Now that whe have an XLD expert here: `Your Atari Computer' (big blue book about 400/800 with a bit of XL stuff) said it came with a built-in speech synthesizer, complete with software support from Basic, is this right? CU Wolfram