DOS 3 and the 1450XLD

[DavidMil]

I was looking through a lot of old docs I have, and I came across an "Introduction to Atari DOS 3 Disk Operating System"

manual from Atari. Throughout the manual it only talks about your new 1450XLD computer. Did DOS 3 only ship with

1450's? It even states in the manual, that older Atari computers cannot take full advantage of your New Atari DOS 3, as

the built in drive of your new 1450XLD can. Having only seen pictures of 1450's I'm curious...

 

Thanks,

DavidMil

[+Allan]

I was looking through a lot of old docs I have, and I came across an "Introduction to Atari DOS 3 Disk Operating System"

manual from Atari. Throughout the manual it only talks about your new 1450XLD computer. Did DOS 3 only ship with

1450's? It even states in the manual, that older Atari computers cannot take full advantage of your New Atari DOS 3, as

the built in drive of your new 1450XLD can. Having only seen pictures of 1450's I'm curious...

 

Thanks,

DavidMil

What is the document that you have? Can you take a quick picture of it? I don't recall any of the DOS 3 manuals that were released with the early 1050s mentioning anything about the 1450.

 

Allan

[+Nezgar]

DOS 3 definitely came as a pack-in with later 1050's. I just lifted this pic of the back of the packaging from eBay where it's featured as a prominent selling feature:

 

 

Maybe the 1450 version was the original manual text, and they did a 'find and replace' for the 1050 version of the manual. They did that for the XF551 manual, which seemed to just replace all occurrences of 1050 with XF-551.

[+MrFish]

And then DOS 3.0 was searched and replaced with DOS 2.5...

[Rybags]

Given the cluster size maybe the intent was to only be used on faster, higher density drives as the XLD might have come with.

I got my 1050 in 1985 from memory, it also had Dos 3 bundled. I think it had the outer box as pictured, it's long gone though.

[Kr0tki]

Did DOS 3 only ship with 1450's?

Obviously not, as the 1450XLD never shipped.

 

What is the document that you have? Can you take a quick picture of it? I don't recall any of the DOS 3 manuals that were released with the early 1050s mentioning anything about the 1450.

It's already hosted in the Manuals section of Atarimania. Edited December 19, 2017 by Kr0tki

[+CharlieChaplin]

Yep, the 1450XLD never officially shipped. But it contains a double-sided drive, alas only with firmware for Medium/Dual Density drive (2x 130k or like Atari said 2x127k = a 254k drive) and like the 1050 it cannot read/write/format 180k (nor 360k) without some changes.

 

The two drive heads in the 1450 are used as two separate floppy drives (e.g. drive 1 and drive 2) and thats what one of the available manuals of DOS 3 describes. I keep the DOS 3 manual only because of the nice pictures and description of the 1450XLD...

[+kheller2]

There are at least two different 1450XLD drive controller prototypes, I thought. Not to derail this conversation... both were discussed in previous threads here at AA. I just can't easily find them right now.

 

I too always drooled over the DOS 3 books in their description of how the 1450 worked. To this day I still have a dream of walking into some old thrift store/warehouse and finding a working dual drive unit and buying it, taking it home and hugging it until the wee hours of the morning.

[DavidMil]

After looking at Atarimania, I see that the manual is there. But here are a few pics from the DOS 3 manual.

 

[Level42]

AFAIK DOS3 shipped with the 1050 from the start here in Europe. Later they either added 2.5 or replaced it not sure.

 

But AFAIK none of the included European manuals ever mentioned the 1450XLD let alone have picture s of it.....so probably a US only thing....