This is a contribution from Urs König to the ql-users mailing list, back in late October this year, as the 30th anniversary of QDOS approached.
Domesdos was the working title of the operation system for the Sinclair ZX83, which eventually became QDOS for the Sinclair QL.
In a CONFIDENTIONAL (at that time) document dated 26 October 1983 (hey, that’s today 30 years ago), Tony Tebby wrote: “The changes from Version 0.05 are mostly in the internal organisation. These reflect the change in emphasis from a small machine to a 128Kbyte minimum configuration, a high probability that a 512Kbyte expansion will be available at launch, a hard disk will be available soon after, and the machine is a flagship of a new line.”
Decades later, back in 2009, TT wrote in a series of articles called “25 years” in the QL Today magazine: “ln a fit of hubris over this “design for reliability” approach, the new operating system was called Domesdos (a home {domestic}) DOS, even though it was designed for business use and it was a ROM operating system and not a disk operating system) after the slogan for a brand of bleach “Domestos” which “kills 99% of all known germs (bugs).”
Even 30 years later no single operating system has proved to be bug free.
Time to dig out Domes*os… 😉
Access the PDF of the 1983 Domesdos documentation:
Note: this is a scanned document of about 5MB in size, and of slightly poor quality in places although still quite readable. It is a scanned version of one of the very first documents issued to QL software and hardware developers. Much has changed since then, but it’s still interesting to see where the operating system was at in those early days! [News Editor]