# Chapter 1. Getting Started...

## What You Need to Run OS-9

OS-9 has been tailored to run on the TRS-80 Color Computers and Dragon 64. OS-9 Level II can only run on the Color Computer 3 due to the requirement of a memory management unit. To use it you'll need the following:

- 64K memory for OS-9 Level One and 128K for Level II

- Disk Drive With Controller Cartridge

- An OS-9 System Disk

OS-9 is also ready to use the following optional equipment that you may have now or may obtain in the future:

- Additional Floppy Disk Drives

- SCSI or IDE Hard Drives

- Printers and Modems

- Additional Serial Ports

- Joysticks and Mice

- Other OS-9 Compatible Languages and Software

### Starting the System

To start up OS-9 follow these steps:

1. Turn the computer and disk drive(s) on. You should see the usual BASIC greeting message on the screen.

2. Insert the OS-9 System Disk in drive zero and close the door.

3. Type “DOS” or “BOOT”.[2] After a few seconds of disk activity you should see a screen with the words “OS9 BOOT”.

4. OS-9 will then begin its “bootstrap” loading process, which involves ten to twenty seconds of disk activity. When the system startup has finished, a message followed by the shell prompt will be displayed.

### In Case You Have Problems Starting OS-9

- If BASIC gives an error message after you type “DOS”, remove the disk, turn the computer off and on, then try again. If this repeatedly fails your OS-9 diskette may be bad.

- Did you remember to turn the disk drive power switch on?

- Does your computer have the required RAM? This is a must!

- If your Color Computer doesn't seem to understand the DOS command, your controller has DOS 1.0. You will need to upgrade to DOS 1.1.

- If the “OS9 BOOT” message is displayed but nothing else happens, you may have a corrupted system disk. Hopefully you did make a backup!

### A Quick Introduction to the Use of the Keyboard and Disks

For now, the only special keys on the keyboard of interest are the SHIFT key which works like a typewriter shift key; the ENTER key which you always use after typing a command or response to OS-9; and the ← left arrow key which you can use to erase typing mistakes.

Your main disk drive is known to to OS-9 as “/D0” and is often called “drive zero”. If you have a second disk drive (drive one), OS-9 recognizes it as “/D1”. Why would anybody put a “/” in a name? Because all input and output devices have names like files, and names that start with “/” are always device names.

### Initial Explorations

When OS-9 first starts up, it will display a welcoming message, and then ask you to enter the date and time. This allows OS-9 to keep track of the date and time of creation of new files and disks. Enter the current date and time in the format requested like this:

                 YY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS
         TIME ?  83 7 14 1420

In the example above, the date entered was July 14, 1983. OS-9 uses 24-hour time so the date entered was 1420 hours or 2:20 PM. Next, OS-9 will print the shell prompt to let you know it is ready for you to type in a command.

Now you're ready to try some commands. A good first command to try is dir (for “directory”). This will display a list of the files on the System Disk. Just type:

    dir

followed by a “return”. OS-9 should respond with a listing of file names which should look something like this:

     OS9Boot     startup     CMDS      SYS      DEFS

The file `OS9Boot` contains the OS-9 program in 6809 machine language, which was loaded into memory during the bootstrap operation.

The file `startup` is a “command file” which is automatically run when the system starts up, and has the commands that printed the welcoming message and asked for the time. Later, You may want to replace this startup file with your own customized version after you are more familiar with OS-9. Do you want to see the contents of this file? If so, just type

    list startup

As you can see, the list command displays the contents of files that contain text (alphabetic characters). Some files like the `OS9Boot` file contain binary data such as machine language programs. These files are called “binary files”, and attempts to list them will result in a jumbled, meaningless display. On the other hand, OS-9 will complain mightily if you try to run a text file as a program!

As you may have surmised by now, the way you ask OS-9 to run a program or command (they're really the same thing) is to simply type its name. Some commands like list require one or more names of files or options. If so, they are typed on the same line using spaces to separate each item.

But where did the list and dir programs come from? There are really more files on the disk than you suspect. The dir command showed you what is the disk's root directory - so named because the OS-9 filing system resembles a tree. Growing out of the root directory are three “branches” - files which are additional directories of file names instead of programs or data. They in turn can have even more “branches” - ad infinitum. If you draw a map on paper of how this works it does look like a tree.

The directory files on your system disk are called `CMDS`, `SYS`, and `DEFS`. The file `CMDS` is a directory that consists of all the system commands such as dir, list, format, etc. To see the files contained in this directory, enter:

    dir cmds

which tells dir to show files on the directory file `CMDS` instead of the root directory. After you type this you should see a long list of file names. These are the complete set of command programs that come with OS-9 and perform a myriad of functions. Chapter Seven explains each one in detail. The dir command also has a handy option to display the `CMDS` directory with less typing:

    dir x

Whenever you want a list of available commands you can use this so you don't have to look it up in the book. The dir command has options which can give you more detailed information about each file.

[2] “DOS” on Color Computers, “BOOT” on Dragons.