This is a short article concerning the very rare 1450XLD. Taken from the Unix newsnet system. Transferred by Mike Blenkiron. Tidied by Dean Garraghty.¢-----------------------------------¢¢I want to correct one inaccuracy. The DOS that was designed for the 1450XLD was not DOS 4, but DOS 3.¢¢I consider myself an expert, being about the last person in the Western Hemisphere that used DOS 3 instead of SpartaDOS. (reasons I'll not go into here...) Then I got an ST, but I digress.¢¢The 1450XLD was a huge XL, with a double-sided (enhanced)double density drive built in, with an expansion bay for a second drive. It had a metal case, so you could put a monitor on top of it. If this is sounding like an Apple III, you're not too far off. Both were dogs, although a 1450XLD would command a far greater price than any Apple III, if you can even FIND an XLD. But I digress again.¢¢DOS 3 was a wierd one alright, but in trying to remain compatible with all the single sided drives, DOS 3 and the XLD did things the absolute wierdest way.¢¢Since the XLD had a double-sided (DS) drive, each side of the disk was treated like a separate drive. Yes, with DOS 3 and your XLD, your single, built in drive was actually D1: and D2:. The reverse side had it's own directory. So if you had two DS drives in your XLD, then you had D1: to D4:. Expanding on that, DOS 3 supported 8 drives like DOS 2 did.¢¢I suppose you could have 8 drives, if Atari ever released a 1055(?) DS drive. Or one could have an XLD with two drives, and daisychain 4 1050s...¢¢The internal XLD drives were alot faster, as they were parallel, not serial like the 810/1050 drives.¢¢Myself, I started with DOS 2, then DOS 3, tried DOS 2.5 then went back to DOS 3. I got DOS 4, but unless you have three drives, it was a pain. Actually, DOS 3 works better with three drives, D1: for the system disk, and 2 and 3 for files and copying.¢
