MiNT is Not TOS: A Multitasking Operating System Extension for the Atari ST

Copyright 1991,1990 Eric R. Smith. All rights reserved. See the file COPYING
for conditions of redistribution.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Features of MiNT that are incompatible with TOS (some might regard these
as bugs):

Changing directories on drives other than the currently logged drive is
not possible (actually, it doesn't seem to work right under TOS 1.4, anyways).
MiNT only keeps one current directory per process.

Processes may have only 20 open files each.

Some low level disk utilities may get very confused if asked to operate on
a pseudo-drive, like Q:, or on a non-tos filesystem.

All of MiNT's console I/O routines (e.g. Cconws, Cconin, Cconout) can be
redirected; TOS apparently always leaves these pointing at the console.
I know of a PD shell that closes handles 0 and 1; it can still keep going
under TOS, but not under MiNT. I regard this as a bug in the program, not
in MiNT.

The BIOS I/O routines on devices 0, 1, and 2 may be redirected by
redirecting file handles -3, -2, and -1 respectively, i.e. they are
no longer guaranteed to access the same printer, rs232, and console
(although they do by default).

MiNT's fs_first/fs_next routines handle the '?' wildcard differently than
does TOS; this only affects pseudo-drives, and isn't likely to
be a problem.

Filenames that are 4 characters long, with a ':' in the 4th position,
are assumed to be device names and are translated into references to drive
V:, i.e. "con:" means "V:\CON". TOS doesn't always do this translation,
it seems, because I can recall creating files named "con:" in the current
directory (not that I *wanted* to, which is the whole point of MiNT's
feature).

All CTRL-ALT-function key combinations are reserved by MiNT. Not many
programs use these, so this shouldn't be a big problem.
