Like the title says, this one is pretty easy I just can't seem to find it explicitlty stated anywhere.
I am just starting out with some very basic program authoring and from what it looks like to me in most if not all cases, some variant of ProDOS is included on disk for use by the program.
Is this correct? Was this to address the obvious storage limitations i.e. lack of HDDs?
Again, easy one, pretty noobish - I just wanted to confirm my understanding.
Thanks.
You need some kind of DOS to boot, so ProDOS is often included on disk, and you'll need BASIC.SYSTEM on the disk as well (since you alluded to programming in BASIC).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProDOS
Just to set clear apart:
ProDOS is 1 out of 4 different kind of Operation Systems thar may be used on the Apple
DOS, ProDOS, UCSD Pascal and CP/M
you might compare this statement with the following:
BASIC ( i.e. Applesoft Basic or Integer Basic are varints of BASIC and there are plenty other programming languages too, like FORTAN, PASCAL, ADA,COBOL, C or C+ and C++ as well as also FORTH or LOGO and plenty other programming languages....
So at the one level you have in a Computer a program written in a programming language....
and at the other hand you have hardware like printers, diskettes, harddisks, RAM Disk Cards, Serial Interfaces and so on connected to that computer that shall be accesed by that programming languages and the Operation Systems.
The way the hardware and its structure is organized is determined by the Operation System or the Driver.
So of course the access of the programm to the Hardware for storage is determined by the present Operation System. The OS you use, will determine the way you store, save or access you data ( including the program ) !
So there is a large variety of combinations possible.
My advice: read the manual of the used operation system and you will recognize how to access the hardware and how to use the hardware from the program. You allways need the knowledge of both:
the programming language and the Operation System to handle the computer from the program.
Any limits are only determined by the Hardware and the Operation System or Driver of the Hardware.
If your Computer has 2 MB RAM then you might program to use that RAM - but another computer with less RAM may crash, if it has less RAM and if you have not tried to find out the limits of the other computer and how to gain with that limit! Same is valid in parts to the storage .... it´s dependent to the hardware present and the operation system present.
back to the question: ProDOS was developed because DOS had reached it´s limitations in storage and ProDOS was able to handle larger storage devices ( like Harddisks ) better....
(and please let´s not start discussion that with UCSD of course it was also possible to use larger storage devices too ... i know that... but this is a question from newbie and i guess he does not want a evening filling lesson about abilities of UCSD - if he has never seen that up till now... and i neither want to write a complete book on that topic ! )
speedyG
Thanks. Very informative.