The Phade Shell for Apple II DOS by Phade de Grass (Frank Gadegast)



"The first DOS 3.3/4, ZDOS, DSR-DOS, CDOS SHELL." - Phade de Grass

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Introduction to "The Phade Shell"



Frank Gadegast AKA "Phade de Grass" is somewhat prolific in his programming. Sometime a little after 1980 around age 14 or so he got his first Apple II computer. Soon he switched to the first IBM-PC's "for making money", decided that they were "no good", and "ran into" his first Unix-machines around 1986 at age 20, leaving behind a "wake" of software and related work that continues today.

One of the products he created for Apple II DOS (probably before 1989) was a unix-inspired shell called "The Phade Shell". Frank still offers it from his ftp site. It is also available in the Downloads section of this website.

But by 1989 the market for the Apple II was somewhat a vanishing one, especially for Apple II DOS (DOS 3.3) software (with DOS 3.3's successor ProDOS 8 in such wide use for so many years already).

Whether or not anyone besides "Phade de Grass" used "The Phade Shell" (or whether Frank even used his shell) might be a matter of interest... but as a matter of record many Internet searches have turned-up virtually nothing to indicate that anyone ever did use it or express any interest in it.

Other DOS 3.3 shells were around years before 1989, like the early versions of Randy Hyde's ANIX which was bundled with Lazer Pascal and Jim Goodnow's Aztec C Shell for DOS 3.3, but both of those had also evolved their later versions to ProDOS years before 1989. Perhaps a difference here was that these other DOS 3.3 shells were part of development environments and the "Phade Shell" wasn't, so maybe the hope was that the "Phade Shell" would be used by a larger audience???

Be that as it may, one could probably argue that "Phade de Grass" may have written his "Phade Shell" for the fun of it. After all, who would use it? By that time most unix types weren't mucking with Apple II's running DOS 3.3 as far as I know unless they were writing software for it, which also probably would not have been a widespread practice at that late date. If Frank didn't write the Phade Shell for the fun of it, that is probably how it all turned-out anyway.


This is speculation of course and we could have asked Frank (and perhaps I will) but for now I have had some fun myself with the "Phade Shell" (and many of Frank's other Apple II creations) and so have given "Phade de Grass" this webpage for the "Phade Shell" adding to the webpages I have provided for the other unix-like shells for the Apple II that I have been playing with of late.

It is probably worth noting that "Phade de Grass" wrote commands for the DAVEX ProDOS shell and extensively contributed programs for Aztec C, extending the capability of their ProDOS shell with his commands and manpages. Again, he probably did so mostly for fun.

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Getting Started



"Phade de Grass" suggests that the shell be installed into a hard disk. But the shell is Apple DOS and not ProDOS so from my experience a hard disk introduces not only a complication but really limits the market on the "Phade Shell" (by 1989 how many Apple II users running DOS 3.3 on a hard disk are in the market for a unix-like shell??? I wonder...).

Be that as it may, I had for some time meant to work with "DOS.MASTER" by the late Glen Bredon, a prolific author of Apple II software, including the popular Merlin assembler. So I installed DOS.MASTER onto a hard-disk (hdv) disk image. Then I installed the "Phade Shell" onto one of the DOS.MASTER partitions following Phade's instructions. In the end after I was done playing with the Phade Shell, I added ALL the rest of Phade's DOS 3.3 Software from his ftp site onto the hard-disk (hdv) image with the DOS.MASTER partition.



For more information and to download Phade's software including the hard-disk (hdv) image noted above see the Downloads section of this website. Phade's DOS 3.3 Software is provided both as individual DOS 3.3 disk images (dsk) and on the phade.master.hdv hard disk image (noted above) on the DOS.MASTER partition as volumes 2 - 10, as well as from his ftp site.

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