VDOS
The disc operating system VDOS was developed by the German company Vortex.
It was provided for use with the Vortex Disc Drives from Vortex (F1-D, F1-S, F1-X, M1-D, M1-S or M1-X).
VDOS was supplied on an EPROM, and was released in 3 versions:
- VDOS 1.0
- VDOS 2.0
- VDOS 2.11
Further there were German and English versions of this ROMs.
The VDOS ROM also contained a machine language monitor.
VDOS is the first DOS to support the Vortex format which become a standard format later on.
Contents
RSX Commands in German and English; VDOS differences compared to AMSDOS
- Some commands are available in German and English language. This is an advantage when using more than one DOS ROM at the same time.
- Vortex is a German company, so they added RSX commands in German and English language. The normal AMSDOS RSX commands |TAPE.xx and |DRIVE/|USER were added as |CAS and |SELECT (which resemble equivalent German words Kassette and Selektieren). (Dobbertin's X-DDOS also supports both the English and German language for RSX commands).
|SELECT is used to both select user and/or drive. e.g. |SELECT,"3" for user 3, |SELECT,"B" for drive B, |SELECT "4B" for user 4 on drive B. VDOS doesn't have USER or DRIVE commands.
- VDOS supplied both German ROMs (with messages in their native language) and English ROMs where the messages are translated. The RSX commands are identical.
- When using CAS CATALOG you give the address of a buffer to fill with the list of files in the current user and drive (in SOFT968 this is a 2KB buffer - but that is only because there are 64 directory entries and each directory is 32 bytes). For VDOS you should use a 4KB buffer to support 128 directory entries). In addition the format of this data differs compared to AMSDOS.
AMSDOS uses:
<ff> <8 bytes filename> <3 bytes extension> <2 bytes size in K> with a byte of 00 to indicate the end of the list.
VDOS uses:
<user> <8 bytes filename> <3 bytes extension> <2 bytes size in K> with a byte of FF to indicate the end of the list.
This is important if you use CAS CATALOG and parse the data to fetch the list of files.
- AMSDOS allows you to specify both the user and drive in a filename.
e.g. "3B:TEST.BIN" is valid and will try to find TEST.BIN in user 3 of drive B.
VDOS doesn't allow this. VDOS only allows the drive to be specified.
e.g. "B:TEST.BIN".
Therefore it's recommended to use SELECT to specify the user.
- VDOS will autoboot a file called "HELLO.BAS" if it exists on the disc. AMSDOS doesn't have this.
Manual
- Vortex Vdos 2.0 Manual (pdf)
(also describes how to upgrade from VDOS 1.0 to 2.0)
Media
Boot-up VDOS message
VDOS external look
Internals photo
Download
Manual (German)
- VDOS 2.0 Manual (German)
Frontpage
Contents
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Erata page 1
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