Atari Operating System

Tyler Caldwell
Operaing Sysyems

The Atari DOS Operating System is the disk operating system that is used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. In 1978 Atari contracted with Shepardson Microsystems, Inc. (SMI) to create a File Management System for future Atari personal computers. The people who worked on the original Atari DOS Operating System were Paul Laughton, also the author of Apple DOS, was the project leader and the co-primary contributor, Kathleen Brien was also a co-primary contributor, Bill Wilkinson was in charge of the scheme design, Paul Krasno implemented the math library routines following guidelines, supplied by Fred Ruckdeshel, Bob Shepardson was an assembler to accept special syntax tables that Paul invented. Mike Peters was a keypuncher, computer operator, junior programmer, and troubleshooter. The initial release date for the Atari DOS operating system was in 1979, definitely an old operating system. The Atari DOS operating system was designed to support only the English language. Unlike windows, the Atari operating system code source is closed, instead of open. The default user interface are two choices between a menu or a command line. The operating system was developed for regular consumers of Atari 8-bit personal computers. In 1981 Atari planned its release of DOS II. As soon as the new operating systems release, DOS I was easily outdated. DOS II included the extremely rare Atari 815 Dual Disk Drives. Version DOS 3 shipped with 1050 disk drives from 1983 to 1985. The 1050 disk drives were created to take advantage of the Dual Density capability. Atari did this by emplimenting a single sided, enhanced density, 130K 5.25’’ floppy disk drive format. Atari called this format “dual density,” but the Atari community called this format “enhanced density,” for the simple fact that the format would not get confused with other