MK-DOS was one of the most widespread
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s for
Elektronika BK
The Electronika BK is a series of 16-bit PDP-11-compatible home computers developed under the Electronika brand by NPO Scientific Center, then the leading microcomputer design team in the Soviet Union. It is also the predecessor of the more power ...
personal computers, developed by Mikhail Korolev and Dmitriy Butyrskiy from 1993. Like
ANDOS
ANDOS is a Russian operating system for Electronika BK series computers: BK-0010, BK-0011, and BK-0011M. They were based on the PDP-11 architecture by Digital Equipment Corporation. ANDOS was created in 1990 and released first in 1992. Initially ...
, the system provided full compatibility for all models, emulating the BK-0010 environments on the more modern BK-0011 and BK-0011M machines. All program requests to a
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
(if they were made through proper ROM functions) were redirected to the disk.
The system supported up to 4 physical disk drives (the actual number was limited by the disk ROM installed) and as many
hard disk
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
partitions
Partition may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive
* Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job
Software
* Partition (database), the division of a ...
as the number of letters in the Latin alphabet, which could be used as separate logical drives, each with a volume of up to 32 MB.
[See also: ]Drive letter assignment
In computer data storage, drive letter assignment is the process of assigning alphabetical identifiers to volumes. Unlike the concept of UNIX mount points, where volumes are named and located arbitrarily in a single hierarchical namespace, driv ...
Starting from version 3.0 the system also supported mounting disk images as
logical drives. When booted on a BK-0011 or BK-0011M the system automatically created a
RAM disk
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* Ra ...
in the computer's memory.
The most widespread
file system
In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...
along MK-DOS users was MicroDOS. It did not support
file fragmentation (like the file system used with
RT-11) and required frequent spatial reallocation to maintain optimum contiguous free space (RT-11 users would use the 'SQUEEZE' command, which worked the same way as the *COMPACT command on
Acorn
The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally
two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...
's
DFS for the
BBC Micro). Although MK-DOS was incompatible with the RT-11's file system, both shared many principles. MicroDOS' file system had read-only support in ANDOS. The filename length was limited by 14 symbols (the
filename extension
A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...
was not recognized separately and was considered as part of the filename).
A minimal installation of the system took as little as 8 KB of the computer's memory. It had a functional
Norton Commander
Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the Symantec corporation). NC provides a text-based user interface for ma ...
-like
file manager called ''MCommander''. It also shipped with a number of utilities including
drivers for the RT-11,
FAT12 and
CSI-DOS
CSI-DOS is an operating system, created in Samara, for the Soviet Elektronika BK-0011M and Elektronika BK-0011 microcomputers. CSI-DOS did not support the earlier BK-0010. CSI-DOS used its own unique file system and only supported a color graph ...
file systems as add-ons for the file manager.
Notes
External links
Disk image of MK-DOS 2.10Disk image of MK-DOS 3.15Disk image of MK-DOS 3.17Disk image of MK-DOS 3.18Mikhail Korolev homepageOriginal documentation for MK-DOS 3.15
*
* ttp://bk0010.narod.ru/docs/BK_Magazine/PKBK-1994-3.djvu V.P.Yurov. Disk operating systems for BK-0011(M). Magazine "Personal computer BK-0010 - BK-0011M", 1994 (djvu)
{{Operating systems for Elektronika BK
Elektronika BK operating systems