9 Dec
2001
9 Dec
'01
12:38 p.m.
--- Louis Schulman <louiss(a)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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