Introduction

Telemática was an Argentinian based company, a joint venture between the software focused Microstar of Carlos Manzanedo and hardware manufacturer Talent. This joint venture acquired hardware and software licenses for MSX in Argentina. Not only were they distributors for Argentinian manufactured Talent MSX computers, they also developed software to go with it. One of their products was a MSX-DOS clone, simply called MSX-DOS.

The original MSX-DOS by Telemática is in Spanish, but translations are available. Remarkably, the source codes of two versions have survived and are available. It is based on the official MSX-DOS.

In the early 1990's Dutch user group HCC MSX-gg started using this MSX-DOS version on their public domain disks. They distributed it with different version numbers and copyright messages. This indicates they probably didn't get the Telemática release directly, and it traveled from South America to Europe in a few steps.

Known versions

There are two known versions of MSX-DOS by Telemática:

Version	Details
MSX-DOS 1.1 rev. A COMMAND 1.11	MSX-DOS 1.10 rev A confusingly ships with another COMMAND version 1.11. It is based on the official COMMAND 1.11 (Tim Paterson) with the only difference being an additional internal CLS command. This version has been made by Carlos A. Ranalli. MSXDOS.SYS is in English for the standard functionality and in Spanish for the CONFIG.SYS messages. COMMAND.COM is in English.
MSX-DOS 1.10 COMMAND 1.20	In code this version is called MSX-DOS 1.20 rev B, and it was extended by Daniel O. Gallimberti of Sielcon. COMMAND 1.20 can also be found as COMMAND 1.40 or 4.00 and copyright messages from Microsoft, Gustavo, S&H Comput., RJMV (Robert Vermeulen) and/or HCC MSX-gg. Though all of them have identical code, messages may have been translated to English or Dutch. This version has an additional 7 internal commands and 2 existing commands have been modified. MSXDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM are both in Spanish.

Features

Config.sys

Telemática's MSX-DOS allowed for use of a config.sys file. This file could contain a few options.

Option	Description
CAPS	Turns caps lock on. MSX-DOS 1.20 rev B only.
COLOR	Sets specific foreground, background and border colors.
DEVICE	Loads device drivers. These drivers required a specific file header, details of which can be found in the source code. They would be loaded and initialized before COMMAND was loaded. Unfortunately, no drivers are known to exist.
KEY	Assigns values to specific function keys. A backslash could be used as a RETURN character. Also if the value is 'SI' (or 'ON' in translated versions) then the function keys would be turned on. The 'SI' or 'ON' argument is case sensitive.

Config.sys is case insensitive. Separator characters are space, tab, ',', ';' and '='. Example:

device=device.sys
key=ON
key=6,color 10,1,1\
key=7,load
key=8,save
key=9,files
key=10,dir
color=15,4,4
caps

Additional commands

These internal commands are available on top of the official MSX-DOS commands in the COMMAND.COM file.

Command	1.11	1.20	Description
BEEP		X	Makes beep sound
CLS	X	X	Clears the screen
COLOR		X	Sets specific foreground, background and border colors
ECHO		X	Shows text message. 'ECHO ON' and 'ECHO OFF' are supported as well
IF <value> <command>		X	If previously given input equals value, command is executed
INPUT <text>		X	Displays text and asks for single character input
VER		X	Shows version information
WAIT n		X	Waits for n seconds

Modified commands

These internal commands have been modified and support additional features.

Command	1.11	1.20	Description
FORMAT		X	Displays a message 'Format another disk (Y/N)?' after formatting.
TYPE		X	Supports switch /P as first argument to allow for paging. Displays message 'Strike a key when ready' after each page.

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