In the beginning was CAOS
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David Brunet
File: In the beginning was CAOS
(Article written by Andy Finkel - April 1988)
...what would the Amiga have been like with the original DOS?
Andy Finkel is the current Manager of Amiga Software at Commodore. He has been involved with<br>Commodore machines at Commodore since before the introduction of the VIC-20.
As most of you know, AmigaDOS was not the first choice for the top-level OS/DOS on the Amiga computer. What we now call<br>AmigaDOS was really the backup DOS, based on an already existing OS known as Tripos (developed at the University of<br>Cambridge Computer Laboratory by the Tripos Research Group, and converted with amazing speed by MetaComCo's Dr.<br>Tim King and his band of programmers). When the original, intended, designed-for-the-Amiga DOS failed to materialize<br>(in what would no doubt be an interesting story in itself), the Amiga was launched with AmigaDOS, and the rest is<br>history, so to speak.
Once in a while, someone suggests that the original DOS be written according to the original specs. This was even<br>proposed by some members of the Amiga team, but Amiga management decided that it wouldn't be possible to complete<br>the DOS and still launch the Amiga on time, especially since the software guys had already given up weekends at<br>home. And going home. And sleeping.
We're left with a big question... what would the Amiga have been like if we could have used the original<br>DOS? What would the character of the Amiga have been? Would life have then been perfect?
There's really no way of knowing, of course. But if I stopped here, this would be a really short article,<br>right? So why not take a quick look at the specs, and maybe do a little comparison with AmigaDOS...
Because these questions greatly interest developers for some reason, a small mention of CAOS on UseNet<br>brought a flurry of electronic mail, all asking for more detail (all right, they wanted the specifications).<br>So I decided to write this - it seemed like more fun than the article I was working on ("A Guide to DOSBase",<br>or "Why is this library different from other libraries?") so I'll save that for another time. Ideally<br>this article should have been written by one of the Amiga people who spec'd CAOS (primarily Carl Sassenrath<br>who also wrote Exec) way back in the dim reaches of time (1984). However, as they've been quiet about it<br>all this time, and I have played with the prototype (do you know what a pain a Sage can be to set up?)<br>it's time. Anyway, the specs are from the CAOS draft document.
Commodore Amiga Operating System
CAOS stands for the Commodore Amiga Operating System.<br>Its purpose was (good place to quote from the draft specifications here):
"It is a small, full-bodied operating system, functioning on a small (but great) machine bound for<br>the consumer market-place. Its primary purpose is not to provide a sophisticated software development<br>environment - rather is provides a foundation for pleasant and useful application programs. This is<br>not to say that it neglects the programmer's needs. Externally it is meant for end users; internally,<br>however, it is designed to support the complex demands of most applications. It provides extra rich<br>functionality for an operating system of its class."
The goals of CAOS are:
Functionality.<br>Usability (easy to use at both outer and inner interfaces).<br>Programability (interactive batch language, rich set of programmer functions).<br>Extensibility (modular and extensible).<br>Reliability.<br>Performance.<br>Size (reasonably compact).<br>Maintainability.
CAOS was always meant to be built on top of Exec (in much the same way that AmigaDOS is built on top<br>of Exec). Exec would provide the low level...