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DOS XE or DOS 2.5


Joey Kay

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Hey gang!

 

I have always been torn between DOS 2.5 and DOS XE.

 

Likely because I learned DOS 2.5 first, I seemed to lean towards it, but DOS XE had some fantastic features (like date-stamping files and if memory serves me correct, I think it was the only program I had that used the XL/XE "HELP" key), and of course, it took full advantage of the XF551 drive.

 

As for DOS 3 - there's an example of some idiots at Warner Atari lacking brain cells. What were they thinking when not making it backwards compatible? If memory serves me correct, I think I had both DOS 3 and DOS 2.5 packed in with my 1050 drive (thank god they tossed in 2.5 or I would've cracked up trying to use DOS).

 

For the record, I used DOS XE and 2.5 with a 130XE, so I was able to take advantage of the RAM disk. However, were these programs memory resident in the 48 and 64K 8-bits? I'm thinking not, but please let me know!

 

Cheers!

 

Joey

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I too started out with DOS 3 and 2.5, although I don't remember if 2.5 came with my 1050 or if I sent to Atari for it (at one time they were "upgrading" people for free). But, I quickly switched to SpartaDOS. If you want to keep the feel of 2.5 and DOSXE, but want stuff that's even better, get MYDOS or even SuperDOS from Australia (fantastic!). if your serious about using dos though, SpartaDOS is the only way to go for command lines and batch files like MSDOS...not to mention it's very easy to switch between using MSDOS on a PC and SpartaDOS one the ATARI, virtually identical to me except for the "D1:/D2:" and drive A/B thing...most commands are similiar or near identical.

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I was never fortunate enough to have used DOS XE, or unfortunate enough to use DOS 3. My 1050 came with 2.5, which I used extensively on my 130XE. Unfortunately, I traded in my 130XE along with TONS of software for a 1040ST. I don't regret getting the ST, but I do regret having to use the 130XE as trade bait. :(

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  • 15 years later...

I have just started to try and use DOSXE. I am using a 130XE and two XF551 drives. When I first booted up, (using a unprotected copy) the configuration told me that my drive 1 was a 810, drive 2 was XF551 and I had no ram disk. Does anyone know enough about DOSXE to give me some pointers.

You need to run SETUP.COM, this file should be on your DOS XE disc.

The Owners Manual is available from Atarimania:

http://www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari_DOS_XE_XF551_Disk_Drive_Owners_Manual.pdf

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Yeah, I'd like a full-featured DOS that supports all "modern things" (folders,date/time etc.) while still being Menu based.

 

I never liked MS-DOS, so why should I like SpartaDos ? I know "everybody" raves about it here but I've always felt that Atari's DOSses (and most third parties for the A8 platform) actually stood out in user-friendliness because they had nice menu's and actually showed you what you were doing/could do.

Edited by Level42
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Yeah, I'd like a full-featured DOS that supports all "modern things" (folders,date/time etc.) while still being Menu based.

 

I never liked MS-DOS, so why should I like SpartaDos ? I know "everybody" raves about it here but I've always felt that Atari's DOSses (and most third parties for the A8 platform) actually stood out in user-friendliness because they had nice menu's and actually showed you what you were doing/could do.

There is a MENU program available in SpartDOS 2.x(3.x?), it is covered in Chapter 11 of the SpartaDOS Construction Set Owner's Manual.

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There is a MENU program available in SpartDOS 2.x(3.x?), it is covered in Chapter 11 of the SpartaDOS Construction Set Owner's Manual.

 

 

Yeah, I'd like a full-featured DOS that supports all "modern things" (folders,date/time etc.) while still being Menu based.

 

I never liked MS-DOS, so why should I like SpartaDos ? I know "everybody" raves about it here but I've always felt that Atari's DOSses (and most third parties for the A8 platform) actually stood out in user-friendliness because they had nice menu's and actually showed you what you were doing/could do.

 

Same in SpartaDOS X. Just type MENU at the command line; it'll launch the menu program from CAR: device.

 

post-30400-0-13677400-1505668700_thumb.png

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I ran setup.com then the configuration changed to both drives being 810. I don't see anywhere I have the ability to change anything other than the number of drives.

 

A similar thing happened to me in the past with DOS XE, it always recognized my XF551 as a 1050 drive and so I was limited to enhanced/130k format only. Even Setup.COM could not change this and I thought, hey, maybe it is because I have a PAL version of the XF551 with an Eprom instead of a ROM (changed/patched XF551 OS by Atari)...? But since you are from the US and most likely have an XF551 with the OS on a ROM, I think there is something else wrong with DOS XE. The XF551 came with Mitsumi (common) and Chinon (not so common) mechanics, it also was available with 8040 and 8050 chips - but I do not think that matters to DOS XE. No clue now, why DOS XE does not detect the XF551 drive correctly allthough it was especially made for this disk drive...?!?

 

Anyways, I never liked DOS XE that much, it has subdirs and date stamps (no time stamp, so a RTC is not needed), but it requires RAM under the OS, it is DOS 2 incompatible, files are listed in length with kbytes, regarding free sectors - all sectors are treated as if they were 256 byte sectors (take a look at the free sectors on a freshly formatted 90k or 130k disk, it is only half of the usual sectors) and it has an annoying menu consisting of 3 separate menus ! (Luckily all three support a directory call.) But most of all, whatever you do in SuperDOS is prompted with the annoying ""Y" if okay to destroy program area" and in DOS XE you are always prompted with the same annoying "Press Start to continue, press Select to abort"... no thanks ! The DOS 2 to DOS XE converter was awkward to use and afaik, my ramdisk was never recognized by DOS XE.

 

So limiting myself to 130k format (allthough I had an XF551), no ramdisk, no speeder, non-DOS 2 format, juggling between 3 different menus, and having to bear with annoying prompts, I concluded that DOS XE was a no-go for me. And I did never regret it. Here in Europe we had several DOS 2.0 and DOS 2.5 alternatives, like BiboDOS, TurboDOS, DOS II+D and others. There was also SuperDOS from Australia (we had two Abbuc versions of SuperDOS 2.9 for free, one supported the Turbo-1050 drive, the other supported Happy+Speedy 1050 drives) and a few other DOS 2.x alternatives...

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Dos XE has A 8 place table of drive types. ie sector size , number of sectors per track etc. If your drive size/type isn't in this table, too bad.

I saw this problem so decided to do something about it. I created a dos XE formatter that creates custom drive types, save it in dosXE and formates the disk.

I used it to create 16 meg partitions but these fail. Apparently, an add in is required. Also DosXE buffers the sector map for each drive. 2 or 3 16 meg partitions quickly fills all available memory. There is a MAX usable size for DosXE in its current form. Need to find the thread on atariage for both the formatter and max size.

 

James

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  • 2 years later...
On 9/19/2017 at 10:46 AM, sup8pdct said:

Dos XE has A 8 place table of drive types. ie sector size , number of sectors per track etc. If your drive size/type isn't in this table, too bad.

I saw this problem so decided to do something about it. I created a dos XE formatter that creates custom drive types, save it in dosXE and formates the disk.

I used it to create 16 meg partitions but these fail. Apparently, an add in is required. Also DosXE buffers the sector map for each drive. 2 or 3 16 meg partitions quickly fills all available memory. There is a MAX usable size for DosXE in its current form. Need to find the thread on atariage for both the formatter and max size.

 

James

 

@sup8pdct

Did you ever release this DOS XE formatter to the public (e.g. here at AA forum) ?!?

 

EDIT: Ha! Found it myself, it is here:

 

 

 

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