OS - BCL Molecular 18

BCL Molecular 18
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OS

Simply known as OS, the next generation operating system for the Molecular, was a development from LOS.  Fundamentally, the OS was still required to do all that LOS did.

Bob Doncaster took over the core OS development from Joe Templeman, and Mick Benham wrote all the utilities.


Any code written for LOS would run under OS without modification - assuming the original programmer didn't do anything too weird!

(I seem to remember when moving data files from LOS to OS, they needed to be moved to an even address??)

There were some important and often welcome changes:

  • Support for more than 64k of memory - by switching between different top 32k boards, while keeping the bottom 32k fixed.
  • Support for CDC Lark Drives and the new SDL SMD Controller
  • Support for the 4 channel serial i/o cards - UCC Card Spec
  • Much friendlier utilities for the programmer and support people.  Much more verbose and generally menu driven.


(C) 2022 Kevin Murrell & The National Museum of Computing
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