>>Hi George,
>>>
>>>I got started with a North Star Computer, Z80 4.7 MHZ, 32K memory and two 180K floppies. it cost me about $10,500.00. I worte a time and billing porgram with it, but came to find out that it was limited to North Star Computers, because it was written in North Star Basic. Later CP/M arrive which was a very efficient little operating system. I ran superclac, wordstar, and MS Basic on it. I learned about five years ago that wordstar was written in assembler by one individual. I bet that took a lot of effort.
>>>
>>>With the arrival of the IBM persoanl computer and 16 bit MS DOS, all computers based on the Z80 8 bit model kind of fell by the wayside. The Z80 only allowed a maximun of 64k of memory. MS DOS and the IBM PC went up to 640K of memory.
>>>
>>>LelandJ
>>>
>>LelandJ,
>>
>>I messed around with an Atari (400/16k then 800XL/64K) for a number of years. I first learning how to program using Atari Basic, which was a 8K ROM cartridge. I then went to 6502 Assembler. The Atari had, arguably, the best ROM BIOS prior to the introduction of the Macintosh.
>>
>>COMPUTE! Books also printed a complete memory map outlining all the important BIOS entry points and register value meanings, as well as the complete annonated source code for the BASIC interpreter and the DOS. Both of these were written by the same people who wrote the original Apple DOS.
>
>I had the same thing for the Apple II plus. The code came in a small binder with a padded cover, but I'll be darned if I can remember who the publisher was. I can almost see it in my mind, but I can't see the name.
>
>The language I first learned, of course, was applesoft basic, and then 6502 assembler. There was a superb symbolic compiler put out, again by someone who I can't remember. There is every chance though that I still have the stuff in the basement. Yes, I'm one of those. I never throw anything away. Then there was good old TurboC.
>
Alan,

My guess would be OSS (Optimized Systems Software) out of Sunnyvale, CA. Bill Wilkinson wrote "Insight Atari" COLUMN for COMPUTE! was part of that group. They're the ones who wrote Apple DOS for the II. They wrote a great Macro Assembler for the Atari.