DOSes for Atari 8bit

Atari DOS 2.5

DOS 2.5 has been developed in 1984 by Optimized Systems Software. It is modificated version of DOS 2.0 and it is official DOS for Atari 8bit computers. It uses menu for comunication with user. It can works with four disk drives and ramdisk. Single and enhanced density.

DOS XL

DOS XL has been developed in 1980 by Optimized Systems Software. Command line and menu available. It works with disks in single and double density.

DOS XE

Developed in 1988 by Atari Corporation. It uses menu, works with disks in single, double and double sided density, also ramdisk. Format of disks isn't compatible with any other DOS. Subdirectories available. For use with XF551 disk drive.

Super DOS

Written in 1986 by Paul Nicholls. It uses menu and works with up to four disk drives and ramdisk. It recognizes single, enhanced, double and double sided density.

MYDOS

Written in 1988 by Wordmark corporation. It uses menu and works with up to eight disk drives (including one ramdisk). It recognizes single, enhanced, double and double sided density. It can create subdirectories and works with hard disk drives.

TOP-DOS 1.5

Written in 1985 by R. K. Bennett. It uses menu and can work with up to eight disk drives (including one ramdisk). It recognizes single, enhanced, double and double sided density. For using with Top Drive.

BiboDOS

Written in 1987 by E. Reusse for Compy-Shop. It uses menu and works with up to eight disk drives (including one ramdisk). It recognizes single, enhanced and double density. The last version, 6.4RF has also Quad density, but the sector linking is a bit different from DOS 2.x as the linking info do not contain the file number.

DOS 3.0

Written in 1983 by Atari Corporation. It uses menu and can recognize only single and enhanced density. Very unconfortable and uncompatible with other DOSes.

SpartaDOS X

Written in 1989 by ICD corporation. This DOS is on cartridge, which containes also many useful external commands. It can works with up to nine disk drives (including up to three ramdisks). It can recognize all Atari density (also hard disk drive). It makes accessible hierarchic structure of subdirectories. It is the most powerful DOS for Atari 8bit. It can be compared to MS-DOS for PCs.

TURBO-DOS 2.1

(contribution by Tamas Bene)

It was released by the german Reitershan Computertechnik in 1990. It is compatible with Atari DOS 2.x, supports densities SD, ED, DD and QD (Quad Density, i.e. double sided double density) The DUP is CP-based (no menu), it can handle up to 8 drives including ramdisk. XE-compatible and other ramdisks up to 256K supported. Commands with many options for file handling, including some simple monitor commands. Also supports Setup- and Dup-batches. (The former is executed once after booting, the latter can be executed at any time using a special command.) The package can be installed to the following configurations:

BW-DOS (newest version 1.30)

(contribution by Sven Gleich)

It was written by BEWESOFT (Jiri Bernasek). BW-DOS is a disk operating system for 8-bit ATARI computers with at least 48 kB RAM, and at least one disk drive. It is designed to be compatible with SpartaDOS, and to use as little memory as possible. In addition, several small bugs known from SpartaDOS were removed, especially problems with XF551. BW-DOS is a command drive system and an advanced menu program is available too (specially for copying Atari DOS 2 compatible disks to BW-DOS).

Last updated on 23-September-97
TMT