A dumb beginner-level question about the Apple III

[Huxley]

I'm happy to report that I have gotten one of my two Apple III's running smoothly! With a deep-cleaning, new Reactive Micro "Universal Power Supply," re-soldered Composite video connector, etc., this machine is running nicely. That said, while I'm far from an expert, I'm much more familiar with how Apple II's work, and the AIII is a new experience to me.

So, here's my Big Dumb Beginner-Level Question: I'm grateful that my Apple III's came with a healthy quantity of software on vintage floppies and most of it works, but I can't figure out if the AIII uses a typical "Disk Operating System" or not. All the apps I've used so far are in the form of a bootable disk, but I haven't quite figured out how to just drop into a command line so I can list files or run apps on other disks (like my Floppy Emu). Am I just not understanding how the Apple III works, or do I just need to get an OS disk written?

Thanks for any clarification you guys can offer!

Huxley

PS Here's a pic of my mid-restoration Apple III playing a thrilling game of VisiCalc

 

[bibilit]

Not a big user of the Apple III myself, but the Apple III has it’s own operating system, known as SOS.

 

[chrisrueckert]

I've used the Apple /// in the 80thies and started to use it recently again but I never had to deal with a prompt like the Apple II does.

Regarding FloppyEmu: Since the drives are differently addressed by that Apple /// than the Apple II, the FloppyEmu needs an adapter. I'm just in the process of building mine and have some left if anyone is interested.

 

[Huxley]

Not a big user of the Apple III myself, but the Apple III has it’s own operating system, known as SOS.

Yeah, SOS is quite impressive - especially if you compare it against the popular OS's of the day. That said, as a total beginner who is much more familiar with other systems, SOS is quite different and takes me a bit more effort to understand.

I've used the Apple /// in the 80thies and started to use it recently again but I never had to deal with a prompt like the Apple II does.

Regarding FloppyEmu: Since the drives are differently addressed by that Apple /// than the Apple II, the FloppyEmu needs an adapter. I'm just in the process of building mine and have some left if anyone is interested.

I'm fortunate in that I already have a ready-made adapter purchased recently from @jajan547, so the physical connection between my Floppy Emu and Apple III is present - I'm just trying to wrap my head around the logical aspect of doing stuff with this system.

What I think I'm starting to understand is that most other OS's I'm familiar with are disk operating systems (whether that's MS-DOS, CP/M, etc.), but SOS seems more like an application operating system. The OS provides tons of clever features, but you don't really interact with it directly - it seems more like you mostly (only?) interact with applications running on SOS, rather than using SOS itself to launch apps, navigate disks, copy files, etc.

I may not be fully grasping this concept yet, but I feel like I'm getting closer...

 

[superjer2000]

I always assumed SOS would be like prodos where you could drop to a basic prompt (basic.sys) and execute commands like cat for catalog and prefix to change directories etc.

Usually prodos loads into a program launcher of some sort and I’d imagine sos does the same thing. Are you able to get into basic to get whatever the Apple III equivalent is to the ] prompt?

 

[superjer2000]

I always assumed SOS would be like prodos where you could drop to a basic prompt (basic.sys) and execute commands like cat for catalog and prefix to change directories etc.

Usually prodos loads into a program launcher of some sort and I’d imagine sos does the same thing. Are you able to get into basic to get whatever the Apple III equivalent is to the ] prompt?

Never mind. Looks like this isn’t really the case and most SOS file management activities are performed by the menu driven sos tools disk.

 

[NJRoadfan]

As others have said, ProDOS wasn't much different from SOS. Apple didn't include a built-in command prompt or filing interface with ProDOS or DOS 3.x outside of Applesoft BASIC. Even then you were limited to just listing directories or load/save/delete operations. Any advanced filing operations required loading up the Apple System Utilities program to copy/move/format/etc. Heck, the "Exit to ProDOS" option on programs dumped you to a very basic "loader" that allowed you to type in a file prefix to start the next program. Later versions came with "Byrd's Better Bye" that at least gave you a directory listing to browse.

Third parties eventually to filled the void. Things like Quark Catalyst and MouseDesk (later bundled with the early Apple IIgs System Disk) gave a basic GUI.

As for SOS, it was pretty advanced for the time. It has loadable device drivers, a nice thing that never properly made it into ProDOS. At least the file system itself was retained.

 

[Huxley]

Never mind. Looks like this isn’t really the case and most SOS file management activities are performed by the menu driven sos tools disk.

Yup, that's what I'm starting to understand too. SOS is (as the name indicates) very sophisticated by the standards of the early 1980's, but it's also quite different from most other OS's, in the sense that it runs "invisibly" in the background, supporting and providing services to applications, but the user never really interacts directly with SOS. For example, most of the the Apple III application disks I have do have some kind of "quit" command, but quitting just presents you with a screen demanding that you insert a bootable application disk and reboot the machine.

As others have said, ProDOS wasn't much different from SOS. Apple didn't include a built-in command prompt or filing interface with ProDOS or DOS 3.x outside of Applesoft BASIC. Even then you were limited to just listing directories or load/save/delete operations. Any advanced filing operations required loading up the Apple System Utilities program to copy/move/format/etc. Heck, the "Exit to ProDOS" option on programs dumped you to a very basic "loader" that allowed you to type in a file prefix to start the next program. Later versions came with "Byrd's Better Bye" that at least gave you a directory listing to browse.

Third parties eventually to filled the void. Things like Quark Catalyst and MouseDesk (later bundled with the early Apple IIgs System Disk) gave a basic GUI.

As for SOS, it was pretty advanced for the time. It has loadable device drivers, a nice thing that never properly made it into ProDOS. At least the file system itself was retained.

Yeah, even as a total Apple III newbie, I'm already quite impressed by SOS... it's just so different from what I think of when I think about "using an operating system." In this OS, the user never really "feels" like they're interacting with the OS - you're just using different programs, all of which can (potentially) hook into or take advantage of the many powerful functions being provided "behind the scenes" by SOS.

A very interesting system!

I guess I now have a follow-up question / sanity-check request. Here are my current working understandings (corrections welcome!):

1. The Apple III can only boot from its internal drive
2. Most applications expect you to boot the machine from their application disk
3. I do not want to run my Floppy Emu cable inside the machine to (effectively) replace the internal drive

Bearing in mind the points above, should I boot the Apple III from its SOS Utilities floppy, and then use the disk format + disk copy commands to copy disk images from the Floppy Emu to a real floppy disk, from which I can then boot and run the Apple III? I think that fits my understanding here, but again - corrections are welcome!

Huxley