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FlexOS AI simulator

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FlexOS

FlexOS is a discontinued modular real-time multiuser multitasking operating system (RTOS) designed for computer-integrated manufacturing, laboratory, retail and financial markets. It was developed by Digital Research's Flexible Automation Business Unit in Monterey, California, in 1985.

The system was considered to become a successor of Digital Research's earlier Concurrent DOS, but with a new, modular, and considerably different system architecture and portability across several processor families. Still named Concurrent DOS 68K and Concurrent DOS 286, it was renamed into FlexOS on 1 October 1986 to better differentiate the target audiences.

FlexOS was licensed by several OEMs who selected it as the basis for their own operating systems like 4680 OS, 4690 OS, S5-DOS/MT and others. Unrelated to FlexOS, the original Concurrent DOS system architecture found a continuation in successors like Concurrent DOS XM and Concurrent DOS 386 as well.

Concurrent DOS 286, Concurrent DOS 68K and FlexOS were designed by Francis "Frank" R. Holsworth (using siglum FRH). Like Portable CP/M, Concurrent DOS 286, Concurrent DOS 68K and Concurrent DOS V60, FlexOS was written in C for higher portability across hardware platforms, and it featured very low interrupt latency and fast context switching.

The original protected mode FlexOS 286 version 1.3 was designed for host machines equipped with 286 CPUs, and with adaptations for NEC V60, NEC V70 and Motorola 68000 processors planned. FlexOS 286 executables using the system's native INT DCh (INT 220) application program interface had the filename extension .286. A CP/M API front-end (FE) was available as well, using the extension .CMD for executables. (A filename extension of .68K was reserved for FlexOS 68K, a file extension derived from Concurrent DOS 68K as of 1986.)

In May 1987, FlexOS version 1.31 was released for 80286 machines. The developer version required an IBM PC/AT-compatible machine with 640 KB of conventional and 512 KB of extended memory, and either a (monochrome) CGA or an EGA graphics adapter.

FlexOS supported a concept of dynamically loadable and unloadable subdrivers, and it came with driver prototypes for floppies, hard disks, printers, serial interfaces, RAM disks, mice and console drivers.

During boot, the FLEX286.SYS kernel would load the resource managers and device drivers specified in the CONFIG.SYS binary file (not to be mixed up with the similarly named CONFIG.SYS configuration file under DOS), and its shell (COMMAND.286) would execute a CONFIG.BAT startup batch job instead of the common AUTOEXEC.BAT.

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