Sparta DOS X - Relation To MS-DOS

Relation To MS-DOS

SpartaDOS X is in fact unrelated to MS-DOS. It is a proprietary OS, that imitates some features of MS-DOS as the standard of the time (late 80's - although this already was a 16-bit era, many 8-bit computers were still in serious use). This is not a slavish imitation. The most visible differences are:

• the file system format: MS-DOS cannot access SpartaDOS X disks and vice versa
• the binary file format: although *.COM and *.EXE filename extensions are in use, these files are not MS-DOS executables (the 6502 processor is not compatible with 8086 anyway)
• the drive specifiers: the drives can be specified in both MS-DOS and Atari manners, i.e. either A:, B:, C: ... or D1:, D2:, D3: ... (and also 1:, 2:, 3: ...). Unlike in MS-DOS, any of these can be a floppy or hard disk.
• the path separator and other special pathname characters: although MS-DOS-alikes '\', '..' are recognized, the SpartaDOS native ones '>', '<' are preferred. Also, SpartaDOS does not recognize '.' as the name of the current directory - one must use a semicolon (';') instead.
• pathnames may contain wildcard characters '?' and '*' (CD FOO*\B?R will enter the first directories that match the names)
• slightly different set of characters is allowed in a pathname and filespec (e.g. the '$' sign is disallowed)
• the I/O redirection is handled using '<<' and '>>' rather than '<' and '>'
• commands typed at the DOS prompt must be followed by a space or comma (CD.. is not accepted, it must be CD .. or CD,..)
• the time stamp resolution unit is 1 second (2 sec. in MS-DOS)
• strict separation of devices and files: even though there is the "CON:" device in the system, SpartaDOS X (unlike MS-DOS) has no problems differentiating it from a disk file named "CON", if such one exists.