TRSDOS

TRS-DOS

TRS-DOS Boot Screen
Developer	Tandy
OS family	DOS
Working state	Historic
Initial release	late 1970s
Latest release	1.3 / May 1, 1981
Available in	English
Platforms	TRS-80
Default user interface	Command line interface

TRS-DOS (which stood for the Tandy Radio Shack - Disk Operating System) was the operating system for the Tandy TRS-80 line of 8-bit Z-80 micro-computers that were sold through Radio Shack through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their own manuals recommended that it be pronounced triss-doss but the common derisive term referred to the platform as trash-eighties and thus this software was sometimes called trash-dos by loyalists of other computing platforms. TRS-DOS should not be confused with Tandy DOS a version of MS-DOS licensed from Microsoft for Tandy's x86 line of PC's.

TRS-DOS was primarily a way of extending the MBASIC (BASIC in ROM) with additional I/O (input/output) commands that worked with disk files rather than the cassette tapes that were used by most other TRS-80 systems.

TRS-DOS supported up to four floppy (mini-diskette) drives which used 5 1/4" (five and one quarter inch) diskettes with a capacity of 89K (kilobytes) each (later 160K). The drives were numbered 0 through 3 and the system diskettes (which contained the TRS-DOS code and utilities) had to be in drive 0.

Commands

Some typical TRS-DOS utilities:

TRS-DOS commands and counterparts in other operating systems

Command	DOS, OS/2, Windows	Unix, Unix-like
APPEND	type file1 >> file2	cat file >> file2
ATTRIB	attrib	chmod
AUTO	AUTOEXEC.BAT	~/.profile or ~/.login or /etc/rc*
BACKUP	diskcopy	tar, cpio, pax, (many others)
CLOCK	prompt $t *	in some shells: PS1="...\t..." *
COPY	copy	cp
DIR	dir	ls
FORMAT	format	mkfs
FREE	chkdsk	df
GETDISK/GETTAPE	?	dd
KILL	del	rm
LIST	type	cat
LOAD program	(no equivalent)	(no equivalent)
PRINT	type file >> prn	lpr
PROT	attrib	chmod
RENAME	ren or rename	mv

Notes:

• Since TRS-DOS didn't have the notion of redirection as UNIX/Linux and MS-DOS do, the APPEND command is somewhat different in concept than the UNIX or MS-DOS notion of appending via output redirection.
• The CLOCK command display a real time clock in the upper corner of the display, almost like a DOS TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident); no exactly corresponding feature exists in MS-DOS or UNIX, though many programs provided similar features for DOS and the common UNIX shells could embed the time into their user defined "prompt string"
• program invocation under TRS-DOS, DOS and UNIX is done by filename; no explicit LOAD command is required for normal binary executables nor for text command files (batch files in DOS and shell scripts in UNIX/Linux). The LOAD command under TRS-DOS would load a binary program into memory, but would not execute it; neither DOS nor UNIX has an equivalent.
• Under DOS and UNIX printing a file can be done with redirection; under UNIX it's normally done by spooling the file to the "line printer" (using the lpr command) because UNIX is conventionally a multi-user system.
• ATTRIB, PROT, and the chmod UNIX command are all somewhat different in their semantics. UNIX/Linux is multi-user and each user can control read, write, and execute permissions on his or her own files and directories. MS-DOS is single user and the file attributes for "read-only," "hidden," and "system" are advisory in nature. TRS-DOS was single user but supported some sort of on disk password protection for specific files.
• The AUTO command set an automatic command to be executed on TRS-DOS boot; under MSDOS the special, reserved file named AUTOEXEC.BAT contained a list of such commands. On UNIX a set of one or more rc files under /etc/ are a set of boot time "run commands" and special "dot files" in a user's home directory are run for each time that a given user logs into the system. UNIX supports many other "dotfiles" for many of its commands which are akin to the Macintosh "preferences" folder contents.
• TRS-DOS (version II) was notable for the inclusion of noise words, similar to the 1959 COBOL specification. These made commands more English-like. For example, the following commands functioned identically:
  • COPY filea fileb
  • COPY filea TO fileb
• Many versions supported a simple password security for files and programs, with separate Read/Execute and full access capabilities. ex: filename/ext.password:drive#

Although MS-DOS owes its heritage most closely to CP/M and thence to TOPS-10, many of the file manipulation commands are very similar to those of TRS-DOS. By comparison the CP/M command for copying files was called pip (both a pun on the Pip printers, a chain of copy centers in that era, and an acronym standing for "Peripheral Interchange Program").

Dates

• May 8, 1979 - Radio Shack releases TRSDOS 2.3
• May 1, 1981 - Radio Shack releases Model III TRSDOS 1.3

External links

• Mike's Virtual Computer Museum: TRS-80
• TRS-80 Error Messages
• TRS-80 Revived Site
• Model III Home Page (with list of TRS-DOS alternatives on the TRS-80 Model III (Archived Site)
• Matthew Reed's TRS-80 Emulator Software Runs under MS-DOS; requires the extraction of a ROM image
• xtrs A TRS-80 emulator for UNIX and X11; similar ROM issues apply
• TRSdisk - TRS-DOS utilities for UNIX
• TRS-80 Virtual Floppy Disk Manager
• TRS-DOS Applications (Archived Site)