NewDos86/90

NewDos86/90 is the result of extending the well known NewDos/80v2 operating system for the Tandy TRS-80 model 1, model 3 and model 4 computers. It is developed by W.S. (Warwick) Sands and D.S. Sands. between 1984 and 1990. Worldwide distribution was done by Computer News 80 in the U.S.A.

The project started with additions to the Disk Basic but later extended to the operating system. Some of the most striking are:

• A timestamp is stored for each file in the directory. Shown by DIR B
• The DIR, COPY and PURGE commands now supports a wildcard syntax. This can be applied on the filename, extension and the date. In short:

  .	start of filename anchor
  /	start of extension anchor
  -	negate operator
  <	upper limit ASCII value or date
  >	lower limit ASCII value or date
  @	one character wildcard
  ?	zero or one characher wildcard
  *	zero or more character wildcard

• Automatic PDRIVE recognition
• PDRIVE extension with SPG (sectors per ganule). This allows reading and writing of double density diskettes made by other DOSses.
• 29 new SYSTEM parameters. These include printer control, type ahead buffer, loading routines in high memory, and more.
• A simple command line calculator at the prompt
• Direct memory access with PEEK and POKE from the DOS command line
• About 40 Basic commands are new or enhanced.

The disk set is available as DMK images, complete with scanned disk labels. The manual is currently available as scanned PDF at the virtual library. Some key pages are available as text to make the search engines happy.

Last update: 2011-01-02

email: fjkraan@electrickery.nl