[Coco] "Mini DOS" in early CoCo disk programs...

[Arthur Flexser]

My suspicion is that a main purpose of the Kilgus DOS was to provide it to
developers before Disk Basic was available, so that Tandy disk programs would be
ready for market as soon as disk systems began to be sold in RS stores.  
Additionally, by having a self-contained DOS included with the program, they
didn't need to worry whether such programs would be compatible with the eventual
release-version Disk Basic.  They also wouldn't need to worry about losing
compatibility should there be subsequent revisions of Disk Basic, which would
otherwise be a likely problem given the lack of a standard set of file-I/O
vectors in Disk Basic.  (The Kilgus DOS is actually not 100% self-contained,
since it uses the Disk Basic vector for DSKCON at $C004 for sector I/O.  If my
theory is correct, developers would have been provided with a version of the
Kilgus DOS that contained its own sector-I/O routine that would have been
removed later and replaced with a call to DSKCON.)

Art

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Rogelio Perea wrote:

> What was the purpose of having a "mini DOS" program loaded in early
> CoCo disk programs? I refer to the program writen by R.G. Kilgus and
> that had to be loaded in software pieces like Disk EDTASM and Disk
> Profile for example...