AtariWiki V3.1: Atari Personal Financial Management System

Atari Personal Financial Management System (P.F.M.S.) CX406#

Foreword#

A foreword here? A definite yes(!) and here is why:#

This contribution is not just another box for the wiki, like all the others, it is a major step for the community! The reasons therefor are:#

a) the box belongs to those boxes Atari doesn't want you to have, they were announced, but never sold to the public. Those boxes had a sticker "not for sale to the general public" on it.
b) only Atari employees did have access to those boxes.
c) this good soul from Atari must had to preserved the diskettes in an excellent way, they could survive 34 years without loosing just a single bit.
d) this good soul from Atari must have deep knowledge how to bring the diskettes into the atr format below.
e) this good soul from Atari must be with us today and must share with us the idea to preserve this for generations to come.
f) this good soul from Atari must fulfill a) to e) all together in one person!

Due to those facts, we are so lucky, that James Bradford was able to bought that box from the good soul mentioned above and wants to share this with us. Therefore, AtariWiki can give him only the highest award possible:

Thank you James, thank you so much! We are so deep in your debt! We will never forget you! Please go ahead with your outstanding work and many thanks for scanning the instructions manual and the quick reference card.

ATR-Images:#

System Diskette I (Model CX8113)
System Diskette II (Model CX8114)
Blank Diskette (Model CX8100)
First Data Diskette ; already formatted in the required P.F.M.S.-Data-Format. Ready to use.

CX406 - Blank Data Disk directory under a normal DOS II 2.0S disk directory

On both System Diskettes copy protection is used. It seems to be Atari DOS II 2.0S(?) type protection. Please take into account, that only DOS I and II were available at the time of creation. Therefore, DOS II duplicate disk would only copy sectors marked as used in the VTOC. P.F.M.S. DOS is a custom DOS II, where the directory and VTOC are different, so normal DOS II won't copy it at all. Users saw this, so they created custom versions of DUP.SYS like Yellow DOS and LJS (Long John Silver) DOS to name a couple.

The goal here would be to get rid of this, create a DD diskette, which holds both system disks on one. So now disk swap isn't necessary any more. Further a DD data diskette, which accesses drive 2 only. The code on the system disks must be changed, when programs on the 2nd system diskette are accessed, as shown in the figure below: 'P.F.M.S. Main Menu with location of the modules on the two system diskettes'.

Manuals:#

Atari Personal Finance Management System-Instruction Manual ; size: 14.6 MB, 92 pages (*)
Atari Personal Finance Management System-Quick Reference Card ; size: 1.4 MB

(*) The manual is with OCR, navigation-links at the left, hyperlinks inside the content pages (pages v, vi and vii inside the manual, else pages 6 to 8 in the pdf file).