Editing History of operating systems (section)

===Home computers===
While many eight-bit [[home computer]]s of the 1980s, such as the [[BBC Micro]], [[Commodore 64]], [[Apple II]], [[Atari 8-bit computers]], [[Amstrad CPC]], [[ZX Spectrum]] series and others could load a third-party disk-loading operating system, such as [[CP/M]] or [[GEOS (8-bit operating system)|GEOS]], they were generally used without one. Their built-in operating systems were designed in an era when [[floppy disk|floppy disk drives]] were very expensive and not expected to be used by most users, so the standard storage device on most was a [[tape drive]] using standard [[Compact Cassette|compact cassettes]]. Most, if not all, of these computers shipped with a built-in [[BASIC]] interpreter on ROM, which also served as a crude [[command-line interface]], allowing the user to load a separate [[disk operating system]] to perform [[file management]] commands and load and save to disk. The most popular{{citation needed|date=July 2015}} home computer, the Commodore 64, was a notable exception, as its DOS was on ROM in the disk drive hardware, and the drive was addressed identically to printers, modems, and other external devices.

Furthermore, those systems shipped with minimal amounts of [[computer memory]]&mdash;4-8 [[kilobyte]]s was standard on early home computers&mdash;as well as 8-bit processors without specialized support circuitry like an [[Memory Management Unit|MMU]] or even a dedicated [[real-time clock]]. On this hardware, a complex operating system's [[Overhead (computing)|overhead]] supporting multiple tasks and users would likely compromise the performance of the machine without really being needed. As those systems were largely sold complete, with a fixed hardware configuration, there was also no need for an operating system to provide drivers for a wide range of hardware to abstract away differences.

[[Video game]]s and even the available [[spreadsheet]], [[database]] and [[word processor]]s for home computers were mostly self-contained programs that took over the machine completely. Although [[integrated software]] existed for these computers, they usually lacked features compared to their standalone equivalents, largely due to memory limitations. Data exchange was mostly performed through standard formats like [[ASCII]] text or [[Comma-separated values|CSV]], or through specialized file conversion programs.