18 Nov
2003
18 Nov
'03
6:26 a.m.
On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Fred Cisin wrote:
"Microsoft Stand-Alone BASIC" (DOS used on
NEC 8001, 9801?, and
some Okidata machines. "MS-DOS Encyclopedia" mentions it on NCR, but I
have never seen that, and suspect that that might be an error, and refer
to NEC. Coco RS-DOS was a heavily modified variant of it, and it
"inspired" Patterson to use the F.A.T. structure in MS-DOS, (as well as
being the DIR structure in 400K MacDOS))
CORRECTION: My wording above would tend to imply that Coco RS-DOS was the
"inspiration". It was the "Stand-Alone BASIC" that was the
"inspiration"
for the MS-DOS directory structure.
Then the early Mac directory strusture was based on ("improved" on?) the
MS-DOS directory structure. (unidirectional linked list of block numbers,
using 12 bit entries, reserving blocks #0,1 for system, and putting the
linked list before the directory entries, immediately following the boot
record. The similarities are too much to be coincidence, and it is
CERTAINLY not because that was the "bes possible" way to do it!