I came into computers after all this in about 1980... but the first I ever heard of SWTP has been on TH-cam. They look like really nice machines... I'd have loved one back in the day.
I really enjoy these demos. I started out on a PDP-8 in the mid 70's and your video on adding a disk drive to an Altair brought the memories flooding back. I seem to remember compiling a version of F-Dos on the PDP-8 also which then refused to have anything to do with the disk drive .. bitswapping etc being the issue. It was so much fun back in the day literally building large bits of your operating system from scratch to work with the hardware. Guess that's why I'm running linux today.
We had a PDP-11 at college... it would have been so cool to get my hands on a PDP-8... but for the cost... that was the very start of personal computing.
Hello! Coming from Adrian's channel. Your videos are awesome! I subscribed. I hope your channel explodes with views, because we need more of this content!
yeah, good series on the begining on 6800 when alot of the world only had access to, or knew about, 8080 Z80 and CP/M - I get the feeling after years of trying, CP/M finally took a look at FLEX with v3 - I had seen FLEX on and of but never really understood what if was, compared to CP/M. FLEX was definitely a leap over FDOS. It did not matter that SWTPc had IO in the center of the memory map, it would have made paging a delight because you could guarentee nothing important was in the that 1st 32kb of RAM - Anyway Your FLEX videos had enough info to inspire me to write a FLEX-ARM OS for my RPi's, so thanx again
In case you are interested, SWTPc FDOS was written by the same guy who wrote the SWTPc Basic's. His name is/was (I dunno whether he is still around or not) Robert Uiterwyk. If I remember correctly, he was a partner in a computer store in Tampa, FL at the time. I believe they sold both SWTPc and North Star.
In the late 80s, at work, all our accounts was on BOS which had contiguous files like FDOS. Growing a file needed you to copy all of the preceding files to another partition then copy/grow the file you wanted to stretch. Then copy the remaining files... it was quite an involved process.
I worked at Percom during this era. They had a hard sector disk system using a uart. We scrapped the numbers off the chip so people would have a harder time copying the thing. Percom had a IK byte DOS.
@@deramp5113 I watched it. Thank you for making these videos. My SWTPC computer went to a friend years ago. I still have my dad's IMSAI. It was a golden age. Thank you again.
I came into computers after all this in about 1980... but the first I ever heard of SWTP has been on TH-cam. They look like really nice machines... I'd have loved one back in the day.
I really enjoy these demos. I started out on a PDP-8 in the mid 70's and your video on adding a disk drive to an Altair brought the memories flooding back. I seem to remember compiling a version of F-Dos on the PDP-8 also which then refused to have anything to do with the disk drive .. bitswapping etc being the issue. It was so much fun back in the day literally building large bits of your operating system from scratch to work with the hardware. Guess that's why I'm running linux today.
We had a PDP-11 at college... it would have been so cool to get my hands on a PDP-8... but for the cost... that was the very start of personal computing.
Hello! Coming from Adrian's channel. Your videos are awesome! I subscribed. I hope your channel explodes with views, because we need more of this content!
Great memories! I buiilt one - used it for years and kept expanding it.
Just came over from Adrian's Digital Basement - looking forward to seeing more pre-Apple machines!
yeah, good series on the begining on 6800 when alot of the world only had access to, or knew about, 8080 Z80 and CP/M - I get the feeling after years of trying, CP/M finally took a look at FLEX with v3 - I had seen FLEX on and of but never really understood what if was, compared to CP/M. FLEX was definitely a leap over FDOS. It did not matter that SWTPc had IO in the center of the memory map, it would have made paging a delight because you could guarentee nothing important was in the that 1st 32kb of RAM - Anyway Your FLEX videos had enough info to inspire me to write a FLEX-ARM OS for my RPi's, so thanx again
i love these computers your showing..and the floppy drives...very cool...
Thanks for the demo! I'll have to come to you if I have any trouble booting up my SWTPC 6800!
In case you are interested, SWTPc FDOS was written by the same guy who wrote the SWTPc Basic's. His name is/was (I dunno whether he is still around or not) Robert Uiterwyk. If I remember correctly, he was a partner in a computer store in Tampa, FL at the time. I believe they sold both SWTPc and North Star.
In the late 80s, at work, all our accounts was on BOS which had contiguous files like FDOS. Growing a file needed you to copy all of the preceding files to another partition then copy/grow the file you wanted to stretch. Then copy the remaining files... it was quite an involved process.
Loading BASIC programs into memory as if they came from paper tape is a neat trick.
"Copying files? Why would a user ever want to do that? That's just creating bloat." -- successful CEO
Great video! I really enjoyed watching this! 👍👍👍
Nice to see rare stuff like FDOS demoed.
Fascinating!
Nice explanation😇😇💪
I worked at Percom during this era. They had a hard sector disk system using a uart. We scrapped the numbers off the chip so people would have a harder time copying the thing.
Percom had a IK byte DOS.
I did a couple of videos about that board. Here's the first one th-cam.com/video/rdCnj8iL1hI/w-d-xo.html
@@deramp5113 I watched it. Thank you for making these videos. My SWTPC computer went to a friend years ago. I still have my dad's IMSAI. It was a golden age. Thank you again.
Did they have any error correction I wonder with these old floppy disk formats? I dont think so.
Cool stuff
What is that terminal? All this time, I've been thinking it's a Wyse-50... but with those control knobs, I'm dead wrong.
It's a Wyse-65