Apple II DOS source code released by Computer History Museum | Hacker News Reader

Apple II DOS source code released by Computer History Museum

9to5mac.com

118 pointsiamtechaddict18 comments

I like how the meeting minutes(1) from 1978 resemble software development meetings of today. Especially Paul (Laughton) did have the same mentality as programmers today:

  Nobody who has looked into the DOS is sure why bug #2 exists

  Paul felt that bug #3 was trivial and he already knew how to fix 
  it.

  Paul said that he could spend either3 to 4 days documenting the DOS, 
  or he could fix the bugs, and wanted to know which we wanted.

  Paul still expressed some doubt as to what was causing bug #5, and 
  bug #2 was a mystery.

(1)https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/do...

No kidding. You could replace "DOS" with "______", then fill in any software project, and it would sound pretty spot on.

I will continue to be like that until software development takes quality seriously and be accountable for defects, like in other industries.

Direct blog post link: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos-source-cod...

"With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the DigiBarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use. This material is Copyright © 1978 Apple Inc., and may not be reproduced without permission from Apple."

Even more impressive to me is Woz's 5 chip disk controller and hand assembled 6502 code.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/do...

That paper brings back memories...

http://www.quill.com/ampad-engineers-pads/cbs/046009.html?cm...

Paul Laughton was my boss for a bit, his amazing effort doesn't surprise me a bit. I hope I have adopted some of his style into my own.

Can we know more about his style?

Wow. If this had been available when I was learning Apple II assembly when I was 8, I would have lapped it up. (Heck, I still will for nostalgia's sake.) At least, I had the source code for some games from computing magazines; that was enough to get me started.

That a major operating system today is open-source is a fantastic thing for young budding coders.

Brings back memories of getting magazines like inCider [1] and Windfall and attempting to type out the assembler or machine code for little apps or (monochrome ;) graphics stuff. Was much the same as magic to me then.

Then realizing there's a typo in there, somewhere... check digits helped a bit I think if whatever you used supported that.

1. http://apple2history.org/history/ah21/#03

"Beneath Apple DOS" by Don Worth and Pieter Lechner was my bible back then. Reading this book absolutely blew my mind and opened up a world of possibilities, not mentioning a much more intimate knowledge of how copy protection worked on the Apple ][.

So that's how the code found its way into the Terminator!

Actually the Terminator listings were from Sandy Mossberg's "Disassembly Lines" column in Nibble magazine, where he published and discussed a commented disassembly listing of DOS.

(Or at least some portions of it. I read Sandy's column religiously at the time, but I don't remember how far it went.)

Anyone have thoughts on "effective meeting minutes?"

I know David Allen only wants to see "Next Actions" at the end of a meeting, but I'm curious if anyone has insight into a long (5+ year) project where meeting minutes were looked back upon.

My notes about my work (bug fix notes, development notes, etc) have been super helpful in the long term, but I've never really looked at meeting notes.

Very cool, doubt I'll look into it too much considering its tons of Assembly in pdf form, but still super neat.

On that note I'm intrigued as to why the 'retyped' version is a .docx

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