hunter44102 Posted February 7, 2005 Share Posted February 7, 2005 All, What are the best Atari 8 bit DOS's, and what are the advantages to each?? I started with Atari DOS 2.5, and then was using SpartaDOS 3.2d for a long time back in 80's/early 90's. Also, if I get into SIO2PC, can I still use Sparta to access all my files/games on the virtual hard drive, or is there a better OS for this? -hunter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted February 7, 2005 Share Posted February 7, 2005 Just recently I've had up and running a MyIDE interface. The tools disks for this comes with MyDOS and the APE stuff seems to favour MyDOS. What I've come across though is that there is a file to folder limit of 64 entries, so just being able to dump across a folder or set of folders from an APE connected drive to an internal HD isn't possible unless you organise you folders properly in advance. Even them, I haven't found a recursive copier for MyDOS yet. Does anyone have one? Maybe I'll have a go at setting up an HD with SpartaDOS instead. So a simplistic summary would be that MyDOS and SpartDOS have an advantage over AtariDOSes due to the folder support. Another consideration maybe to think in terms of helpful loader menus. The newer (slimmer?) DOSes appear to support these well but I don't have much experience of them. Regards, Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted February 12, 2005 Share Posted February 12, 2005 Maybe I'll have a go at setting up an HD with SpartaDOS instead. Another consideration maybe to think in terms of helpful loader menus. The newer (slimmer?) DOSes appear to support these well but I don't have much experience of them. SpartaDOS v3.3a works with the ROM version of the myIDE patches, but not with the softOS version. BeweDOS works with both and is SpartaDOS compatible. I don't know the limitation of BeweDOS. I've got my system to autoboot a GUI using Tom Hunt's ATOS and SpartaDOS v3.3a. ATOS is pretty neat, but it needs some polishing up. It's pretty fast running from the hard drive, especially when you put the overlays on a ramdisk. On the topic of mini-DOSes, there is MyMSDOS which is the Micro-SpartaDOS menu/launcher which loads really low and reads a SpartaDOS partition. It's been modified by (I think) Marius Diependorst to work with MyIDE. Primarily this would be good for launching EXE games. I haven't used it yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted February 12, 2005 Share Posted February 12, 2005 Anyone have a link to ATOS that works? The one posted recently didnt work for me Id be interested in this low loading DOS for MyIDE stuff since .exes is what Im going to play primarily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LYNXGUY Posted February 12, 2005 Share Posted February 12, 2005 I like DOS 2.5 because it can read DOS 3.0 format as well as DOS 2.0 and DOS XL. I also like Rana Smart DOS because you can easily go from single density to double density and also format in either density. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dinosaur Posted February 12, 2005 Share Posted February 12, 2005 Who in the HELL would want to read DOS 3? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LYNXGUY Posted February 12, 2005 Share Posted February 12, 2005 My buddy and I were given a bunch of diskettes with games & programs on them that were in DOS 3 format. I don't like DOS 3 and any DOS is better than DOS 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velcro_SP Posted February 13, 2005 Share Posted February 13, 2005 I don't like DOS 3 and any DOS is better than DOS 3 Heh heh, nobody like DOS 3 and I don't like it either. I remember getting it and expecting it to be better and it was just awful. BeWe DOS is my vote for best DOS. Neat, sweet, efficient, works on all Atari, and is very to the point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJ Posted February 14, 2005 Share Posted February 14, 2005 The problem w/ DOS 3 is that it'd save files in blocks, & if a file was ONE BLOCK & ONE BYTE, it'd save into a second block, wasting all that disk space. I knew early on to avoid DOS 3, though I got it when I bought my second 1050. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8BIT 1337 Posted February 15, 2005 Share Posted February 15, 2005 I always used DOS 2.6f back in the day. Couldn't tell you why - it was just there to use. Today I'm more of a MyDOS user, but today I'm doing a lot of stuff direct to hard drives and whatnot because of IDE and emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 goochman: ftp://ftp.spudster.org/CTH/Cth_Shareware/ATOS/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Gracias Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 What are the best Atari 8 bit DOS's SpartaDOS X 4.2x. Advanced memory management, low memory requirements, native relocatable file formats, powerful filesystem, great I/O library, path searching, up to 1423 (one thousand four hundred twenty three) files per subdirectory, convenient and configurable UI, tons of utility programs. The SpartaDOS is perhaps the only DOS on Ataris that provides real seek(), thus allowing trurly free access to any file location at any time. The next one is MyDOS - eventhough it doesn't have even a fraction of the power that SpartaDOS X offers - it is very close to SpartaDOS 2.x/3.x, moreover, it is superior than SpartaDOS 3.x in such a detail that you can run Turbo BASIC XL with it. However, MyDOS has two big disadvantages: it is menu driven, which allows to load programs, but does not allow to pass command line arguments to them. The other disavantage is worse: MyDOS continues the old, primitive and wasteful filesystem invented by Atari for DOS 2.0 - thus: please get a longer file,open it, and read last 10 bytes twice; this is possible on every decent filesystem - including SpartaDOS filesystem - just not on DOS 2.0 FS. The rest is the silence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fres Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 DOS 3 was cool! Some great features (some poorly implemented), nice looking interface, but loads of compatibility problems, a hog. I wish they had done a better job with that one... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LYNXGUY Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 I would like to have DOS 3, DOS 4 and SPARTA DOS on separate floppies and I will send you some floppies to put them on if any wants to do that for me ?? Just PM me with the details I already have DOS XL, DOS 2.0, DOS 2.5, MyDOS and RANA DOS on floppies, am i missing any ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
highendsystems Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 I would like to have DOS 3, DOS 4 and SPARTA DOS on separate floppies and I will send you some floppies to put them on if any wants to do that for me ?? Just PM me with the details I already have DOS XL, DOS 2.0, DOS 2.5, MyDOS and RANA DOS on floppies, am i missing any ??? Does anybody remember MicroDOS? Okay, so it was simply a loader, but was very small compared to the other DOS's.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 Anyone uses the dos he likes most, and in my opinion this has anything to do with custom needs. I don't like DOS-ses with Menu's... They are always returning when you don't want that. I don't like slow and stupid solutions like mem.sav things. I've been using SpartaDOS 3.3a for a long time, and I love it most. It is very flexible, and works perfect on 16MB partitions, and with MAC/65. As far as I know it is bugfree (important). MyDOS is not my favorite. The only thing I like on MyDOS is the compatibility with DOS 2.x ... but that's all. But anyone is free to use any DOS he wants. Global there are two types of users. The people who like DISKS, and the people who like to use large partitions. And when you are a large partition lover (16MB) your choice is not so big Marius Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 At the risk of being flamed by the other members here... I now use DOS4 with everything except .xex games, that I use MyDOS for... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 SuperDOS 5.1 (if only it had Hard Drive Support) but it does have nice XF551 Support and if you need a dos that has Hard Drive Support I would go with MyDOS4.53 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 At the risk of being flamed by the other members here... I now use DOS4 with everything except .xex games, that I use MyDOS for... Is that's DOS XE? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 At the risk of being flamed by the other members here... I now use DOS4 with everything except .xex games, that I use MyDOS for... Is that's DOS XE? Nope... DOS 4... QDOS... Supposed to be for the 1450XL but eventually ended up being sold by Antic magazine... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 On the Atari Emulator, I prefer MyDOS because you can use large disk images and has little compatibility problem. Works great with Turbobasic. Spartados is good, unless you want to run something that also loads a part of itself under the OS ROM. I kinda wished someone got SpartaDOS to use one of the extended ram banks computers with more than 64k instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 My little and modest experience is that the people from yesteryear are VERY used to DOS 2.x like DOosses. So everything that looks, and works, and feels like that thing they were used to use those days, do want to continue that feel, and chose for MyDOS... Like I said: everybody is free to use whatever DOS he wants to use, ofcourse! But sometimes I have the idea that the format-incompatibility and the command-line interpreter scare most people, and so they decide to leave SpartaDOS for what it is. I used my atari 800XL from 1984 - 1990 always with Dos 2.x (1050 drive) and I never heard of SpartaDOS at all. In 1990 I sold all the atari stuff, but regret that, so bought "millions" of 8bitters back from 1994 till now. As soon as I got SIO2PC and BLACKBOX, and get used to work with 16MB partitions, I found out -for myself- that spartaDOS is the better alternative (compared to MyDOS). Perhaps because in 1990-1994 I used a DOS PC... and spartaDOS looks like msdos on PC? I don't know. I'd say: why not give it a try longer than 5 minutes? Perhaps it is an idea when I setup a nice 16MB partition with some tools, games, demos etc. on it, and put it somewhere online to download. This might be a good start for some people to give it a try Marius Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beetle Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 (edited) I mostly use MyDOS 4.5x with Toms Navigator 1.22 since i do most stuff on my SD and CF "drives". On them i work often with multiple attached diskimages that have up to 16MB, so subdirectories are important to have. Toms Navigator makes working with subdirectories easy and fast. It looks like a Norton Commander for our a8. When working on my 800XL/1050 based stock XL system, i prefer Turbo DOS 2.1. This is a DOS 2.5 compatible, Commandline based DOS. Has small footprint and lots of features. Supports RAMdisks, double density drives, switching BASIC on and off, has batchfile support, can show headers of files, and, and, and The commands are always 3 characters big, for example "LOA file.ext" to load or FMS, FME, FMD for formatting in single, enhanced or double density. "TYP file.txt" lists a file to the screen, handy for readme's. Only drawback is, it doesn't support MyDOS subdirectories and larger disks. Its my absolute favourite. My wish would be a MyDOS with TurboDUP Edited October 10, 2007 by Beetle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 I mostly use MyDOS 4.5x with Toms Navigator 1.22 since i do most stuff on my SD and CF "drives". On them i work often with multiple attached diskimages that have up to 16MB, so subdirectories are important to have. Toms Navigator makes working with subdirectories easy and fast. It looks like a Norton Commander for our a8. When working on my 800XL/1050 based stock XL system, i prefer Turbo DOS 2.1. This is a DOS 2.5 compatible, Commandline based DOS. Has small footprint and lots of features. Supports RAMdisks, double density drives, switching BASIC on and off, has batchfile support, can show headers of files, and, and, and The commands are always 3 characters big, for example "LOA file.ext" to load or FMS, FME, FMD for formatting in single, enhanced or double density. "TYP file.txt" lists a file to the screen, handy for readme's. Only drawback is, it doesn't support MyDOS subdirectories and larger disks. Its my absolute favourite. My wish would be a MyDOS with TurboDUP Hi Beetle- What is TurboDup? Is this the the DUP.SYS package for Dos XF? -Larry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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