FLEX is a discontinued single-tasking

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

developed by

Technical Systems Consultants Technical Systems Consultants (TSC) was a United States software company. Headquartered first in West Lafayette, Indiana (it was started by Don Kinzer and Dave Shirk, EE graduate students at Purdue University) and later (1980) moved to Chapel Hill ...

(TSC) of

West Lafayette, Indiana West Lafayette () is a city in Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, about northwest of the state capital of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette is directly across the Wabash River from its sister city, ...

, for the

Motorola 6800 The 6800 ("''sixty-eight hundred''") is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the Motorola 6800 family, M6800 Microcomputer System (latter dubbed ''68xx' ...

in 1976.

Overview

The original version was distributed on 8" floppy disks; the (smaller) version for 5.25" floppies is called mini-Flex. It was also later ported to the

Motorola 6809 The Motorola 6809 ("''sixty-eight-oh-nine''") is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the 6 ...

; that version is called Flex09. All versions are text-based and intended for use on display devices ranging from printing terminals like the

Teletype Model 33 The Teletype Model 33 is an electromechanical teleprinter designed for light-duty office use. It is less rugged and cost less than earlier Teletype machines. The Teletype Corporation introduced the Model 33 as a commercial product in 1963 after ...

ASR to smart terminals. While no graphic displays are supported by TSC software, some hardware supports elementary graphics and pointing devices. FLEX is a disk-based operating system, using 256-byte sectors on soft-sectored floppies; the disk structure uses linkage bytes in each sector to indicate the next sector in a file or free list. The directory structure is simplified as a result. TSC (and others) provide several programming languages including

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

in two flavors (standard and extended) and a tokenizing version of extended BASIC called Pre-compiled BASIC,

FORTH Forth or FORTH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine * ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008 * ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw * Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotla ...

, C, FORTRAN, and

PASCAL Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

. TSC also wrote a version of FLEX, ''Smoke Signal DOS'', for the California hardware manufacturer

Smoke Signal Broadcasting Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product ...

; this version uses forward and reverse linkage bytes in each sector which increase disk reliability at the expense of compatibility and speed. Later, TSC introduced the multitasking,

multi-user Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving t ...

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

UniFLEX operating system, which requires DMA disk controllers, 8" disk, and sold in small numbers. Several of the TSC computer languages were ported to UniFLEX. During the early 1980s, FLEX was offered by Compusense Ltd as an operating system for the 6809-based

Dragon 64 The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before mo ...

home computer.

Commands

The following commands are supported by different versions of the FLEX operating system.FLEX 9.0 User’s Manual
/ref> * APPEND * ASN *

BACKUP In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

* BUILD * CAT *

COPY Copy may refer to: *Copying or the product of copying (including the plural "copies"); the duplication of information or an artifact **Cut, copy and paste, a method of reproducing text or other data in computing **File copying **Photocopying, a pr ...

* COPYNEW * C4MAT * CLEAN *

DATE Date or dates may refer to: *Date (fruit), the fruit of the date palm (''Phoenix dactylifera'') Social activity *Dating, a form of courtship involving social activity, with the aim of assessing a potential partner ** Group dating *Play date, a ...

* DELETE *

ECHO In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the list ...

* EXEC * FIX * GET * I * JUMP * LINK * LIST * MEMTEST1 * MON * N * NEWDISK * O * P * P.COR * PO * PRINT * PROT * PSP * Q * QCHECK * READPROM *

RENAME Rename may refer to: * Rename (computing), rename of a file on a computer * RENAME (command), command to rename a file in various operating systems * Rename (relational algebra) In relational algebra, a rename is a unary operation written as \r ...

* RM * S * SAVE * SAVE.LOW * SBOX * SP * STARTUP *

TOUCH In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is ...

* TTYSET * UCAL * USEMF *

VER Ver or VER may refer to: * Voluntary Export Restraints, in international trade * VER, the IATA airport code for General Heriberto Jara International Airport * Volk's Electric Railway, Brighton, England * VerPublishing, of the German group VDM P ...

* VERIFY * VERSION * WRITPROM * XOUT * Y

References

External links

FLEX User Group

SWTPC 6800 FLEX 2 and 6809 FLEX 9 / UniFLEX / OS9 Level 1 emulator

The Missing 6809 UniFLEX Archive

DragonWiki

FLEX Software Archive
{{Disk operating systems Discontinued operating systems Disk operating systems TRS-80 Color Computer 1976 software

Overview

Commands

See also

References

External links