Q1-Lite

To work with the Q1 it is important to understand that the Q1 operating system (ROS) has no built-in commands. As far as I can tell, not a single one.

All there is is keyboard input with some line editing support such as backspace, tab and delete and a program loader.

The user types in a command, which is interpreted as the name of a program located on one of the disks. This program is then loaded and executed. Additional text after the filename is (sometimes) interpreted as arguments to the program.

Programs can fail and decide to halt. Typically when this happens, user interaction is required. The normal approach is to press the ‘GO’ key. Some programs can be halted by pressing the ‘STOP’ key.

There is a also a ‘RESET’ button to restart the system if the program is running in an infinite loop.

Here are some examples of commands that are known to work

DINDEX

Reads the INDEX file and provides details of the files on the disk: Name, record size, number of records, start and end track, whether it is protected.

Q1 drives are enumerated starting with 1.

> DINDEX

Starts the DINDEX program. The user will be queried for which drive to investigate.

> DINDEX 3

Starts DINDEX looking at drive 3

From here the program is function-key driven for the nine functions. Use F1 - F9.

ALTER

Rename, Protect or Free (unprotect) a file. ALTER takes zero or more arguments

> ALTER

Starts the ALTER program. The user is queried for which action to take.

> ALTER Rename

Starts ALTER and goes straight to the rename user input. User must supply the remaining information

> ALTER Rename 2

Rename file on disk 2. User must supply the src and dst filename

> ALTER Rename 2 SCR

Rename SCR on disk 2, user must provide destination filename.

> ALTER Rename 2 SCR SCR2

Performs renaming without user interaction.

Commands for protecting and freeing/unprotecting a file without user interaction:

> ALTER Protect 2 SCR
> ALTER Free 2 SCR

PRINT

Prints the contents of a file.

> PRINT Q1

COPY

Copies a file. Both file must already exist and record size and number of records must be identical.

Syntax: COPY src dst src_disk dst_disk

> COPY
> COPY T1R10 T2R10 4 4

SORT

> SORT TT1R10 TT2R10

This command sorts TT1R10, whereas the second file seems untouched.