Way back when there was a disk interface for the T/S 2068 called Ramex Millenia K. See UPDATE for January 1988 page 8. SPDOS was originally marketed by WATFORD ELECTRONICS as a disk interface and operating ysytem. KEPSTON later marketed a version which used a smaller amount of RAM, approx. 700 bytes (WATFORD used about 8K). A varient of the SPDOS interface was marketed in North America by Ramex International, LTD and known as the MILLENIA K. The SPDOS presently being marketed by the CUYAHOGA VALLEY SOFTWARE WORKS is a modification of SPDOS for the 2068 running on Oliger hardware. It is sold under license from ABBEYDALE DESIGNERS LTD,. who wrote SPDOS.
It is still available from CUYAHOGA VALLEY SOFTWARE WORKS; 615 SCHOOL AVE.; CUYAHOGA FALLS, OHIO 44221 for $24.95 plus $1.50 postage. Currently it is available through CVSW only on 80 track 5.25 disks but I could help make it available on 40 track 5.25 disks. The package will consist of two disks and a 30 page manual.
The first disk is just a few files and it converts the Oliger disk system to accept SPDOS. Then you place the SPDOS boot disk in the first drive and press enter and there is the SPDOS screen and you are ready to work with SPDOS. While the Larken and the Oliger number the disks 0, 1, 2, and 3; SPDOS numbers the drives 1, 2, 3, and 4. And you have to use drive 1 (SPDOS #1 not Oliger #1) for the boot disk. In fact there are many things that require that drive to have the SPDOS boot disk in drive 1. The commands are very similar to Larken except that you can only use PRINT #4:command: X.X.
The main differences that you will find are that this is a RAM based DOS and it is in memory from 58500 thru 63500. It supports sequential files and also program overlays.
One main difference in the DOS is that SPDOS FORMATs a track to ten 512 sectors and the minumum SAVE to disk is 1K. Then there is a maximum of 144 files to a disk and if the disk is not a data disk the first 15K is not useable for SAVEing a file to since it will have the BOOT program there.
The only problem I had with SPDOS was in copying the disks using MOVE. The manual gave the following:
PRINT #4: MOVE "", "": PRINT d1,d2but when I tried it I got ERROR messages mostly var not found.
I messed around and tried this and that with more ERROR messages. I finally called Thomas Simon and he looked it up in the manual and aha! this is what I was supposed to have used:
PRINT #4: MOVE "", "": PRINT 1,2or whatever drives you are copying from and to.
It worked, and when I asked Frank Davis about it he said he had the same problem.
To FORMAT a disk you can either use the FORMAT that is in the SYSCOPY program or use the following:
PRINT #4: FORMAT “disk name”: PRINT (number of the drive to be formatted 1-4), (the number of tracks of that drive 35, 40, 80), (the number of sides on the drive 1 or 2), (and the stepping rate 1-4 with 1=6MS, 2=12MS, 3=20MS, 4=30MS)
I have a version of MSCRIPT that works with SPDOS but it has had the memory shortened so that it has about 2 1/2 pages of text or ROOM in memory 9627. But it works.
And now I have a copy of TASWORD that works with SPDOS. But it does have a limited file size.
And my thoughts about SPDOS is that while it works it is not friendly like either the Larken or the Oliger DOS in that it is software only and it uses up 11K of memory. I now know what the MSDOS users go through. First you load the software that prepares the Oliger for SPDOS and then you LOAD SPDOS. And SPDOS is not bashfull about reporting an error code which you seldom see with either the Larken or the Oliger. It is a joy to use a real user friendly disk operating system.