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AMSDOS is a disk operating system for the 8-bit
8-bit

Eight-bit CPUs normally use an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit address bus which means that their address space is limited to 64 KBs. This is not a "natural law", however, so there are exceptions....
 Amstrad
Amstrad

Amstrad is an electronics firm based in Brentwood, Essex in Essex, England and founded in 1968 by Sir Alan Sugar in the United Kingdom. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading....
 CPC Computer
Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad during the 1980s and early 1990s. "CPC" stands for 'Colour Personal Computer', although it was possible to purchase a CPC with a Green screen display as well as with the standard colour screen ....
 (and various clones). The name is a contraction of Amstrad Disc Operating System.

AMSDOS first appeared in 1984 on the CPC 464, with added 3 inch disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 drive, and then on the CPC 664 and CPC 6128. Relatively fast and efficient for its time, AMSDOS was quicker and more effective than most of its contemporaries.

AMSDOS was provided built-in to ROM (either supplied with the external disk drive or in the machine ROM, depending on model) and was accessible through the built-in Locomotive BASIC
Locomotive BASIC

Locomotive Basic is a proprietary dialect of the BASIC programming language written by Locomotive Software used only on the Amstrad CPC . It was the main ancestor of Mallard BASIC, the interpreter for CP/M supplied with the Amstrad PCW and later the Amstrad-designed and built ZX Spectrum +3....
 as well as through firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 routines.






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AMSDOS is a disk operating system for the 8-bit
8-bit

Eight-bit CPUs normally use an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit address bus which means that their address space is limited to 64 KBs. This is not a "natural law", however, so there are exceptions....
 Amstrad
Amstrad

Amstrad is an electronics firm based in Brentwood, Essex in Essex, England and founded in 1968 by Sir Alan Sugar in the United Kingdom. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading....
 CPC Computer
Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad during the 1980s and early 1990s. "CPC" stands for 'Colour Personal Computer', although it was possible to purchase a CPC with a Green screen display as well as with the standard colour screen ....
 (and various clones). The name is a contraction of Amstrad Disc Operating System.

AMSDOS first appeared in 1984 on the CPC 464, with added 3 inch disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 drive, and then on the CPC 664 and CPC 6128. Relatively fast and efficient for its time, AMSDOS was quicker and more effective than most of its contemporaries.

AMSDOS was provided built-in to ROM (either supplied with the external disk drive or in the machine ROM, depending on model) and was accessible through the built-in Locomotive BASIC
Locomotive BASIC

Locomotive Basic is a proprietary dialect of the BASIC programming language written by Locomotive Software used only on the Amstrad CPC . It was the main ancestor of Mallard BASIC, the interpreter for CP/M supplied with the Amstrad PCW and later the Amstrad-designed and built ZX Spectrum +3....
 as well as through firmware
Firmware

Firmware is a term sometimes used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs that internally control various electronic devices. Typical examples range from end user products such as remote controls or calculators, via computer parts and devices like harddisks, keyboard s, TFT screens or memory cards, all the way to scientific instr...
 routines. Its main function was to map the cassette
Compact Cassette

The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape Sound recording and reproduction format....
 access routines (which were built-in to every CPC model) through to a disk drive. This enabled the majority of cassette-based programs to work with a disk drive with no modification. AMSDOS was able to support up to two connected disk drives.

Alternatives

Other disk operating systems for the Amstrad range included CP/M
CP/M

CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/Intel 8085 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. Initially confined to single tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors....
 (which was also bundled with an external disk drive, or built-in on ROM depending on model) and RAMDOS, which allowed the full (800K) capacity of single-density 3 ½" disks to be used providing a suitable drive was connected.