The DAVEX Shell for the Apple II by David A. Lyons (Dave)
"What does Davex not do, Dave?" - James Luther 1988
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Introduction to DAVEX
"Well, if you don't have anything better to do, you can all pat me on the back..."
- David A. Lyons (Dave) 1988
In putting this page together the Internet was scoured for all available
evidence of David A. Lyon's DAVEX Shell but even so more versions may exist than are listed here,
so email me (Bill Buckels) at bbuckels@mts.net if you
can provide me with DAVEX Shells, Documentation and Examples
other than what is listed on this website.
If you are a Windows User your best bet to handle the various archives here is
Andy McFadden's CiderPress.
The best emulator for the ProDOS 8 Disk Images is likely
Tom Charlesworth's AppleWin.
The DAVEX Shell
"Mike Lutz suggested the name "Davex." If you don't like it, blame him."
"ProDOS has no way to accept commands from you directly, so some sort of command interpreter is required."
Davex is a ProDOS 8 command shell & program launcher from DAL Systems (David A. Lyons).
Davex includes a large number of "housekeeping" commands for managing disks, directories, and files.
It provides a framework for assembly language programmers to add commands and also sports an
expandable help system. It is more unix-like in flavour than not...
Dave who now fancies himself as "Mr. Tangent" and
blogs about his workshop is still very much alive and kicking.
His work on Davex shows that he is very talented and he also notes
on his website that a Y2K compliant version was
programmed, but the versions I could find around the Internet (Versions 1.23 and 1.27) weren't.
We can probably assume that by the time Y2K rolled around, and despite the high quality
of DAVEX, that there wasn't much demand (if there ever was) for a unix-like shell on
the Apple II. It doesn't really matter much for the purposes of this webpage if the DAVEX
versions offered from here handle dates correctly. But Dave indicates that anyone interested
in a Y2K version should email him:
David A. Lyons (dlyons@lyons42.com)
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DAVEX Downloads
Several download options are available but they mostly all amount to the same thing...
DAVEX has been installed and preconfigured on emulator disk images of type hdv and dsk and
put into ZIP files. There is certainly sufficient documentation to use DAVEX. You will see
beg notices in some of this but DAL Systems (David A. Lyons) long ago made this "Freeware"...
"Nifty List, Davex, and DIcEd used to be Shareware. They are now freeware,
and someday I'll package these up and donate them to the Lost Classics project.
(If you care, remind me.)" - http://www.lyons42.com/
Documentation
Disk Images
Extras
It is probably worth noting that a number of programmers (some notable) wrote commands for DAVEX and probably
they did so mostly for fun and it is also likely that DAVEX itself was written mostly for fun. After graduating in 1988
Dave went to work for Apple Computers and his work on this and other similar projects was done on the side.
Evidently his personal interests included the vintage Apple II computer long after his professional
interests continued to move forward in time.
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© Copyright Bill Buckels 2009
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