Probably an easier question
What do you remember about the EXDOS evolution?
Currently we have these versions: 0.3, 1.0, 1.2, 1.3, 2.0
The 1.0 is the officially released version in the EXDOS cards. The 1.3 came from the Enterprise Computers Gmbh in the
Enterprise Disk Drive which has a built in EXDOS card.
we got the others from internet friends few years ago.
The
0.3 has most of the commands.
In the
1.0 the commands ATTR, EXIT, ATDIR, ASSIGN, BUFFERS, MAPDISK has been removed (painful lack of ATTR), some of these are available in IS-DOS.
The code is significantly rewritten. I think because run out of ROM space (the 0.3 is also 16K) needed the command removal.
This version has some bugs, for example stack cannot be on the Page 0 when te FISH called.
The 1.2 is probably a bug fix release, same capatibilities with the 1.0, code sligthly modified.
Now I think this is the latest version from the IS.
The 1.3 is modified version of 1.2, by the German company. All messages and its handlers modified for two languages (English/German). It is in 32K EPROM with lots of free spaces.
Later in Hungary some unofficial modifications from this version: German replaced with Hungarian. For the free spaces some of removed commands have been put back (ATTR, ATDIR, ASSIGN, MAPDISK), and the IS-DOS has been also put to the ROM.
Currently this is the mostly used version.
And the most interesting version the 2.0!
It is about 99.99% same as the 1.2, the code has been minimally modified at the low level floppy routines: added a big delay! The normal EXDOS uses 30 clock cycles for between sending the command to the WD and firstly reading the DRQ bit. This modified version uses a 120 cycles!
This is meainingless in the normal Enterprise, it is make randomly data loss errors (first DRQ missed).
But the Hitachi Super Z80 (which is later licensed back by the Zilog then called as Z180) executes the instructions with less clock cycles. On faster CPU this modification can have a reason!
Probably, this version for the promised (but never released
) new super EP?