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"There are no subdirectories in AMOS." Yowch. Like PC-DOS 1.0 all over again.

• zanethomas 5y ago
  Technically that's correct, but a bit misleading. You need to bear in mind how limited disk storage was in the 70s and early 80s. When I got to AM systems were booting from 8" floppy disks. That gave you about 500kb, iirc. The file system had "directories" in this form: [nnn,nnn] Where, again iirc, nnn was 8 bits, so 11 111 111, 377 for example. Only 16 bits were required to specify the location of a file. Filenames, btw, were six characters.
  • ZWoz 5y ago
    Your description ([nnn,nnn]) reminded me TOPS-10 and indeed, that AMOS link mentions this: "The similarities with DEC's operating systems, particularly TOPS-10, were not lost on Digital Equipment Corporation". So, that file hierarchy model is even earlier, than 70s and 80s. Wikipedia says that TOPS-10 was released in 1967 (back then different name, renamed in 1970). DECsystem-10 was anyway pretty different hardware from modern computer, running from tapes and so on. Sorry for that offtopic rambling, I am little bit enthusiastic every time, if I see something TOPS10 related.
    • zanethomas 5y ago
      iirc (so many years) AMOS was based on DEC's RSTS hence a lawsuit which AM eventually won the western digital chipset that powered the first am systems was a five-chip 40-pin set connected by a private cmos bus ... probing with a scope was amusing the instruction set was basically identical to the pdp-11
  • kingcharles 5y ago
    That's a good point. I don't really remember bothering with directories on any of my 360kb 5.25" floppies in the 80s. When you can only fit 10 files on a disc a hierarchy is usually unwarranted. You hierarchy is those little plastic dividers in your floppy disc storage box.