Disc Filing System (original) (raw)
The Disc Filing System (DFS) is a computer file system developed by Acorn Computers, initially as an add-on to the Eurocard-based Acorn System 2. In 1981, the Education Departments of Western Australia and South Australia announced joint tenders calling for the supply of personal computers to their schools. Acorn's Australian computer distributor, Barson Computers, convinced Joint Managing Directors Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry to allow the soon to be released Acorn BBC Microcomputer to be offered with disk storage as part of the bundle. They agreed on condition that Barson adapted the Acorn DFS from the System 2 without assistance from Acorn as they had no resources available. This required some minor hardware and software changes to make the DFS compatible with the BBC Micro.
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| dbo:abstract | The Disc Filing System (DFS) is a computer file system developed by Acorn Computers, initially as an add-on to the Eurocard-based Acorn System 2. In 1981, the Education Departments of Western Australia and South Australia announced joint tenders calling for the supply of personal computers to their schools. Acorn's Australian computer distributor, Barson Computers, convinced Joint Managing Directors Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry to allow the soon to be released Acorn BBC Microcomputer to be offered with disk storage as part of the bundle. They agreed on condition that Barson adapted the Acorn DFS from the System 2 without assistance from Acorn as they had no resources available. This required some minor hardware and software changes to make the DFS compatible with the BBC Micro. Barson won the tenders for both states, with the DFS fitted, a year ahead of the UK. It was this early initiative that resulted in the BBC Micro being more heavily focused on the education market in Australia, with very little penetration of the home computer market until the arrival of the Acorn Electron. The DFS shipped as a ROM and Disk Controller Chip fitted to the BBC Micro's motherboard. The filing system was of extremely limited functionality and storage capability, using a flat directory structure. Each filename can be up to seven letters long, plus one letter for the directory in which the file is stored. The DFS is remarkable in that unlike most filing systems, there was no single vendor or implementation. The original DFS was written by Acorn, who continued to maintain their own codebase, but various disc drive vendors wrote their own implementations. Companies who wrote their own DFS implementations included Cumana, Solidisk, Opus and Watford Electronics. The Watford Electronics implementation is notable for supporting 62 files per disc instead of the usual 31, using a non-standard disc format. Beyond that, the Solidisk implementation introduced proprietary "chained" catalogues which allowed unlimited files per disc (only constrained by the disk size). Other features in third-party implementations included being able to review free space, and built-in FORMAT and VERIFY commands, which were shipped on a utility disc with the original Acorn DFS. Acorn followed up their original DFS series with the Acorn 1770 DFS, which used the same disc format as the earlier version but added a set of extra commands and supported the improved WD1770 floppy drive controller chip. (en) |
| dbo:wikiPageExternalLink | http://mdfs.net/Docs/Comp/Disk/Format/DFS http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/DFS.rtf http://bbc.nvg.org/doc/WatfordDFS.txt |
| dbo:wikiPageID | 1702003 (xsd:integer) |
| dbo:wikiPageLength | 19359 (xsd:nonNegativeInteger) |
| dbo:wikiPageRevisionID | 1050219481 (xsd:integer) |
| dbo:wikiPageWikiLink | dbr:Can't_extend dbr:Read-only_memory dbr:Escape_character dbr:Watford_Electronics dbr:Modified_Frequency_Modulation dbr:Control_character dbr:PATH_(variable) dbr:BBC_BASIC dbr:BBC_Master dbr:BBC_Micro dbr:ASCII dbr:Acorn_Computers dbr:Acorn_Electron dbr:Acorn_MOS dbr:Acorn_User dbr:Advanced_Disc_Filing_System dbr:Floppy_disk dbr:Fragmentation_(computing) dbr:Floppy_disk_variants dbr:Kilobyte dbr:Hermann_Hauser dbc:Acorn_Computers dbr:Acorn_System_2 dbc:Disk_file_systems dbr:Shell_script dbr:File_system dbr:File_system_fragmentation dbr:Frequency_modulation dbr:IBM_Personal_Computer dbr:Intel dbr:Operating_system dbr:RISC_OS dbr:Macro_(computer_science) dbr:Working_directory dbr:The_Micro_User dbr:Western_Digital_FD1771 dbr:Chris_Curry |
| dbp:attributes | Directory character, Load address, Execution address, Locked (en) |
| dbp:badBlocksStruct | None (en) |
| dbp:compression | No (en) |
| dbp:dateRange | N/A (en) |
| dbp:datesRecorded | None (en) |
| dbp:developer | dbr:Acorn_Computers |
| dbp:directoryStruct | Single catalogue of 31 fixed length records (en) |
| dbp:encryption | No (en) |
| dbp:fileStruct | Start-Length entries (en) |
| dbp:fileSystemPermissions | No (en) |
| dbp:filenameCharacterSet | ASCII (en) |
| dbp:forksStreams | No (en) |
| dbp:fullName | Disc Filing System (en) |
| dbp:introductionOs | dbr:Acorn_MOS |
| dbp:maxFileSize | 255 (xsd:integer) |
| dbp:maxFilenameSize | 7 (xsd:integer) |
| dbp:maxFilesNo | 31 (xsd:integer) |
| dbp:maxVolumeSize | 256 (xsd:integer) |
| dbp:name | DFS (en) |
| dbp:os | dbr:Acorn_MOS |
| dbp:partitionId | None (en) |
| dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate | dbt:Multiple_issues dbt:Refimprove dbt:Reflist dbt:Start_date_and_age dbt:Manual dbt:BBC_Computer_Literacy_Project dbt:File_systems dbt:Infobox_filesystem |
| dct:subject | dbc:Acorn_Computers dbc:Disk_file_systems |
| gold:hypernym | dbr:System |
| rdf:type | yago:Artifact100021939 yago:Computer103082979 yago:Device103183080 yago:Instrumentality103575240 yago:Machine103699975 yago:Object100002684 yago:PhysicalEntity100001930 yago:Whole100003553 yago:WikicatAcornComputers |
| rdfs:comment | The Disc Filing System (DFS) is a computer file system developed by Acorn Computers, initially as an add-on to the Eurocard-based Acorn System 2. In 1981, the Education Departments of Western Australia and South Australia announced joint tenders calling for the supply of personal computers to their schools. Acorn's Australian computer distributor, Barson Computers, convinced Joint Managing Directors Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry to allow the soon to be released Acorn BBC Microcomputer to be offered with disk storage as part of the bundle. They agreed on condition that Barson adapted the Acorn DFS from the System 2 without assistance from Acorn as they had no resources available. This required some minor hardware and software changes to make the DFS compatible with the BBC Micro. (en) |
| rdfs:label | Disc Filing System (en) |
| owl:sameAs | freebase:Disc Filing System yago-res:Disc Filing System wikidata:Disc Filing System https://global.dbpedia.org/id/4ivWp |
| prov:wasDerivedFrom | wikipedia-en:Disc_Filing_System?oldid=1050219481&ns=0 |
| foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf | wikipedia-en:Disc_Filing_System |
| is dbo:wikiPageDisambiguates of | dbr:DFS |
| is dbo:wikiPageRedirects of | dbr:Disk_Filing_System dbr:Acorn_DFS |
| is dbo:wikiPageWikiLink of | dbr:List_of_file_systems dbr:MK-DOS dbr:BeebEm dbr:Crazee_Rider dbr:Elixir_(video_game) dbr:Error_message dbr:Watford_Electronics dbr:Comparison_of_file_systems dbr:BBC_Master dbr:BBC_Micro dbr:Disk_operating_system dbr:DFS dbr:Acorn_Electron dbr:Acorn_MOS dbr:Advanced_Disc_Filing_System dbr:Econet dbr:Panos_(operating_system) dbr:Floppy_disk_variants dbr:List_of_RISC_OS_filetypes dbr:Title_(command) dbr:File_system_fragmentation dbr:Unified_Emulator_Format dbr:Sideways_address_space dbr:Disk_Filing_System dbr:Acorn_DFS |
| is foaf:primaryTopic of | wikipedia-en:Disc_Filing_System |