operating system The Sinclair
QL's proprietary
operatingsystem. The origin of the name is uncertain (a weak pun on
another OS around from the birth of personal computers called
Q.D.O.S. - Quick And Dirty Operating System. QDOS might also
stand for QL Data/Disk/Drive/Device Operating System.
QDOS did the usual OS sorts of things, as well as
multitasking. It was unusual in several ways. It treated all
devices (serial ports, mouse ports, screen,
microdrive,
disk drive, keyboard, etc.) uniformly, so you could print a
text file direct to disk or save a binary to the screen for
example.
Also logical channels could be assigned to particular physical
devices. Output directed to a channel would go to the
appropriate in/output. This also meant you could have many
windows on screen (the QL booted up from internal ROMs with 3
windows - command line, output and program listing) all
independent to some extent. Channels could be redirected
without affecting the way the process sent or received the
data.
(1996-07-22)