RODOS
RODOS was a high-capacity disc operating system released by Romantic Robot, whose main aim was to allow you to make use of the extra capacity on 3.5in discs. It shipped on a single 16k sideways ROM. It was written by Matthew Edwards between 1985 and 1989.
Unlike other similar DOSses (ParaDOS, MS800, S-DOS, ROMDOS), RODOS aimed to do significantly more than provide new, high-capacity formats. Among its features were:
- Long filenames (no restriction to 8.3 format)
- Hierarchical subdirectories
- 'Autorun' facility (automatically loads DISC., DISC.BAS or DISC.BIN if present)
Unlike ParaDOS and ROMDOS, RODOS was not a modified version of the original AMSDOS code: its disc access routines were all new.
However, despite its advanced features, RODOS never gained much of a foothold. This is commonly attributed to the fact that it took up substantially more RAM workspace than AMSDOS, thereby lowering HIMEM and making it incompatible with much software.
Contents
RODOS Extra
(From the publicity)
RODOS Extra is on disc and need RODOS on ROM.
It offers nearly 200ks of valuable information how to get the most out of RODOS, with examples of RODOS applications ranging from simple to complex such as a Disk Doctor or IBM MSDOS Disk Reader. The indispensable extra.
Workspace Documentation
The manual has a corrupted page when it talked about the workspace area.
A more detailed version of the workspace documentation is located here
| Offset | Size | Use |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | RODOS rom number |
| 1 | 1 | CPM rom number (Rom number+&30 if found, or &3F if CPM ROM is not found) |
| 3 | 1 | Current drive letter, eg, A,B,C,D,E,F etc |
| 4 | 1 | Current drive number, See appendix A |
| 8 | 1 | Loading messages (|opt,1,x) |
| 9 | 1 | Disk read error retry count (|opt,5,x) |
| 11 | 1 | Expansion Ram count (in 16k blocks) |
| 12 | 1 | Start prbuff bank |
| 17 | 1 | Screen output redirection value (from |PRINT,n) |
| 18 | 1 | Current side of disc (0 or 1) |
| 19 | 1 | Previous Drive, eg |C:|dir,"A:" will make location 3 0 (for drive A), and location 19 will be 2 (for drive C) |
| 22 | 1 | Overwrite file: 0=ask 1=overwrite 2=create backup |
| 23 | 2 | Address of input buffer (file header) |
| 25 | 2 | Address of input buffer (sector block) |
| 27 | 2 | Address of output buffer (header) |
| 29 | 2 | Address of output buffer (sector block) |
| 51 | 3 | Original contents of KL_FIND_COMMAND location. (KL_FIND_COMMAND was patched by RODOS) |
| 54 | 1 | AMSDOS User Number (0-16) |
| 65 | 1 | Case sensitivity on file names (0=On, Case sensitive. 1=Off, Case insensitive) |
| 66 | 1 | Home drive number for |CD |
| 67 | 1 | Home drive letter for |CD |
| 68 | 1 | Home track for |CD |
| 69 | 1 | Home sector for |CD |
| 70 | 2 | HL Value from KM_TEST_KEY on boot |
| 78 | 1 | RODOS User Number (0-255) |
| 79 | 1 | RODOS User Number Reserved - Set to 255 |
| 88 | 2 | Extra external disk drives port number |
| 90 | 3 | Original contents of the TXT_OUTPUT (&BB5A) call |
Pictures
- RODOS
Advertisement in AA 30 - Page 58
Roms
RODOS201.zip (Version 2.01 EPROM Image)
RODOS211.zip (Version 2.11 EPROM Image)
RODOS212.zip (Version 2.12 EPROM Image)
RODOS213.zip (Version 2.13 EPROM Image)
RODOS215.zip (Version 2.15 EPROM Image)
RODOS217.ROM (Version 2.17 EPROM Image)
RODOS219.zip (Version 2.19 EPROM Image)
Recent ROM Updates
The following releases are not official, written by Cormacj. The work is tracked here on GitHub and bug reports and feature requests can be made there.
They do include bugfixes, and for V2.22, an improvement that makes it easier to temporarily disable the ROM if needed.
Rodos220.zip (Version 2.20 EPROM Image - not official - see README)
Rodos221.zip (Version 2.21 EPROM Image - not official - see README)
Rodos222.zip (Version 2.22 EPROM Image - not official - see README)
Disc
(Side B)
(Side A)
Manual
RODOS Manual (pdf)
RODOS Manual OCR'd and updated (pdf by Cormacj )
