MK-DOS

MK-DOS
Developer Mikhail Korolev and Dmitriy Butyrskiy
Working state Abandoned
Source model written in assembler and/or debugger
Latest release 3.17
Platforms Elektronika BK (PDP-11 architecture)
Default user interface MCommander graphical file manager
License Proprietary

MK-DOS was one of the most widespread operating systems for Elektronika BK Soviet personal computers, developed by Mikhail Korolev and Dmitriy Butyrskiy from 1993. Like ANDOS, the system provided full compatibility of operating environments for all models of BK, emulating environments of the BK-0010 on more modern BK-0011 and BK-0011M machines. All requests to a magnetic tape from programs if they were made through proper ROM functions were redirected to a disk.

The system supported up to 4 physical disk drives (the number actually limited by disk ROM installed) and as many hard disk partitions 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). 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 in the computer's memory.

The file system that was in widespread use with MK-DOS 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 user would use the 'SQUEEZE' command, which worked the same way as the *COMPACT command on Acorn's DFS for the BBC Micro). Although MK-DOS was incompatible with 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 was not recognized separately and was considered as part of the filename).

Minimum installation of the system took not more than 8 KB of the computer's memory. The system had a functional menu-driven Norton Commander-like file manager called MCommander. The system shipped with a number of utilities including drivers for RT-11, FAT12 and CSI-DOS file systems as add-ons for the file manager.

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