QDOS

(operating system)The Sinclair QL's proprietary operating system. The origin of the name is uncertain (a weak pun onkudos, perhaps, as Unix was on Multics). There wasanother OS around from the birth of personal computers calledQ.D.O.S. - Quick And Dirty Operating System. QDOS might alsostand for QL Data/Disk/Drive/Device Operating System.

QDOS did the usual OS sorts of things, as well asmultitasking. It was unusual in several ways. It treated alldevices (serial ports, mouse ports, screen, microdrive,disk drive, keyboard, etc.) uniformly, so you could print atext file direct to disk or save a binary to the screen forexample.

Also logical channels could be assigned to particular physicaldevices. Output directed to a channel would go to theappropriate in/output. This also meant you could have manywindows on screen (the QL booted up from internal ROMs with 3windows - command line, output and program listing) allindependent to some extent. Channels could be redirectedwithout affecting the way the process sent or received thedata.

QDOS

(Quick and Dirty Operating System) The CP/M-like operating system developed by Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft purchased it for USD $50,000 and turned it into PC-DOS and MS-DOS. The rest is history. See CPM.