cvs commit: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/zip-drive article.sgml

[Kevin Oberman]

> From: "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah at freebsd.org>
> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:03:54 -0700
> Sender: owner-cvs-all at freebsd.org
> 
> 
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> On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 11:41, Simon L. Nielsen wrote:
> 
> > As I see it, DOS means all variants (including MS-DOS, DR-DOS, IBM-DOS
> > and so on) where MS-DOS refers specifically to MS-DOS.  In the context
> > of FreeBSD documentation I think in most cases when referring to
> > MS-DOS, it would apply to other DOS variants as well.
> 
> Although this is almost totally irrelevent in this context, DOS can
> refer to operating systems other than MS-DOS workalikes...the first
> example that comes to my mind is the Disk Operating System that ran on
> Apple IIs long before Microsoft cared about PCs. [1]
> 
> Bruce.
> 
> [1] It's not *totally* irrelevant in that if someone were to write some
> Handbook text about running Apple II emulators such as kegs under
> FreeBSD, they'd probably be talking about DOS in a non-PC context.  [2]
> 
> [2] I'm feeling silly...must be time for lunch.

Almost all computers "of a certain age" have had an operating system
called DOS. In the early '70s I ran DOS on our PDP-11/40.

DOS simply is a disk based OS. (As opposed to earlier paper tape and
magnetic tape based systems. Of course, most of the folks who read this
have probably never seen a paper tape reader and could not conceive of
an OS that actually ran on it.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634