DOS (Disk Operating System)

DOS (Disk Operating System)

Introduction to DOS   MS-DOS   Starting MS-DOS... C:\>_   An example of MS-DOS's command-line interface, this one showing that the current directory is the root of drive C.   Company/ developer: Microsoft OS family: DOS Source model: Closed source Latest stable release: 8.0 / September 14, 2000 Kernel type: Monolithic kernel Default user interface: DOS CLI License: Proprietary Working state:           MS-DOS (for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system commercialized by Microsoft.   It was the most widely used member of the DOS family of operating systems and was the dominant operating system for the PC compatible platform during the 1980s.   It has gradually been replaced on consumer desktop computers with various generations of the Windows operating system.   MS-DOS was originally released in 1981 and had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000.   It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources.;

DOS (Disk Operating System)   History of DOS   MS-DOS began as QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System), written by Tim Paterson for computer manufacturer Seattle Computer Products (SCP) in 1980.   It was marketed by SCP as 86-DOS because it was designed to run on the Intel 8086 processor.   QDOS function calls were based on the dominant CP/M-80 operating system, written by Digital Research, but it used a different file system.   In a sequence of events that would later inspire much folklore, Microsoft negotiated a license for QDOS from SCP in December 1980 for $25,000, then re-licensed QDOS to IBM. Microsoft then acquired all rights to QDOS for only $50,000 from SCP in July, 1981, shortly before the PC's release.   The original MS-DOS advertisement in 1981.   IBM and Microsoft both released versions of DOS; The IBM version was supplied with the IBM PC and known as PC-DOS. Microsoft released its versions under the name "MS-DOS". Computer advertisements of this period often claimed that computers were "IBM-Compatible" or very rarely "MS-DOS compatible." The two terms were not synonyms. There were computers which used MS-DOS which could not run all the software that an IBM-Compatible machine could.   An example is the Pivot, which used MS-DOS but was not IBM-Compatible.   The versions of MS-DOS and PC DOS and their releases are the following: • PC DOS 1.0 - August 1981 – initial release with the first IBM-PC (COMMAND.COM is 4959 bytes)   • PC DOS 1.1 - May 1982 – support for 320 be double-sided floppy disk   • MS-DOS 1.25 - May 1982 – first release for IBM PC compatibles marketed under different brands (COMMAND.COM is 4986 bytes)   • MS-DOS 2.0 - March 1983 – introduced subdirectories, handle-based file operations, command input/output redirection, and pipes. Microsoft decided to use backslashes as pathname separators rather than slashes as on Unix apparently due to the latter character being used as the switch character in most DOS and CP/M programs. Adds support for hard drives and 360KB floppy disks   • PC DOS 2.1 - October 1983 – support for IBM Paccar   • MS-DOS 2.11 - March 1984 – non-English language and date format support (COMMAND.COM is 16229 bytes)   • MS-DOS 2.25 - October 1985 – better support for Japanese Kanji, and Korean character sets, shipped to western Pacific countries only   • MS-DOS 3.0 - August 1984 – added support for PC AT: 1.2 MB floppy disks and hard disk partitions of up to 32MB, one primary and one "logical drive" in an "extended partition"   • MS-DOS 3.1 - November 1984 – support for Microsoft networking   • MS-DOS 3.2 - January 1986 – support for 3.5 inch, 720 kB floppy disk drives (v 3.21 COMMAND.COM is 23612 bytes)   • PC DOS 3.3 - April 1987 – support for IBM PS/2: 1.44 MB floppy disk drives, added codepage support (international character sets) (COMMAND.COM is 25307 bytes)   • MS-DOS 3.3 - August 1987 – supported multiple logical drives (COMMAND.COM is 25276 bytes)   • MS-DOS 4.0 - June 1988 – derived from IBM's codebase rather than Microsoft's   • PC DOS 4.0 - July 1988 – added DOS Shell & support for hard disks of >32MB using the format from Compaq DOS 3.31. But it had many bugs and less free conventional memory than before. Generally regarded as an unpopular release   • MS-DOS 4.01 - December 1988 – bug-fix release (COMMAND.COM is 37557 bytes)   • MS-DOS 5.0 - June 1991 – memory management, full-screen editor, QBasic programming language, online help, and DOS Shell gains task switcher. Also add file transfer facility licensed from Rupp Technology (Fast Lynx) (COMMAND.COM is 47845 bytes)   • MS-DOS 6.0 - March 1993 – added DoubleSpace disk compression, disk defragmentation, and other features (COMMAND.COM is 52925 bytes)   • MS-DOS 6.2 - November 1993 – bug fix release (COMMAND.COM is 54619 bytes)   • MS-DOS 6.21 - February, 1994 – following Stac Electronics lawsuit, removed DoubleSpace disk compression (COMMAND.COM is 54619 bytes)   • PC DOS 6.3 - April 1994   • MS-DOS 6.22 - June 1994 – last official stand-alone version. DoubleSpace replaced with non-infringing but compatible DriveSpace tool (COMMAND.COM is 54645 bytes)   • PC DOS 7.0 - April, 1995 – bundles Stacker in place of DriveSpace   • MS-DOS 7.0 - August 1995 – shipped embedded in Windows 95. Included Logical block addressing and Long File Name (LFN) support   • MS-DOS 7.1 - August 1996 – shipped embedded in Windows 95B (OSR2) (and Windows 98 in June 1998). Added support for FAT32 file system   • MS-DOS 8.0 - September 2000 – shipped embedded in Windows Me. Last version of MS-DOS. Removes SYS command, ability to boot to command line and other features   • PC DOS 2000 – year 2000-compliant version with minor additional features. Final member of the MS-DOS family         DOS (Disk Operating System)   Why We Need DOS?   DOS stands for Disk Operating System. DOS controls the computer’s hardware and provides an environment for programs to run. This system program must always be present when working with our computer.   There are a variety of reasons why we need DOS. A few of them are listed below to satisfy our curiosity.   1. DOS controls the flow of information between us and the computer (translator).   2. DOS allows us to store information on your computer.   3. DOS allows us to retrieve information stored on our computer.   4. DOS interprets and translates the software us have on our computer.   5. DOS gives us access to all its function (i.e. saving, copying, and printing files).   6. DOS is not case sensitive; therefore, a command can be entered in with CAPITAL LETTERS, lower-case letters, or a MiXtuRe of the two.         DOS (Disk Operating System)   Activating DOS from Window   To activate DOS from Windows we will need the following steps: 1) Locate the MS-DOS icon on the Desktop.   2) Now move the mouse-pointer over the MS-DOS icon present on the Desktop and double click the left mouse button. Instantly, the DOS screen along with a prompt(C:\>) is displayed.   Or we can do it like these ways: 1. Let's open an MS-DOS Prompt window. To do that, click on the "Start" menu (at the lower left of our screen) and select "Run...". Then we type "command" (no quotation marks) into the box and click "OK".       2. We should see an MS-DOS Prompt window appear. Output   3. We tell the MS-DOS Prompt window what we want to do by typing commands rather than using our mouse. The MS-DOS Prompt window understands the commands. At the end of each command, press the Enter key. To get help on a particular command, add " /?" to the end of the command, such as: "dir /?".   Ex: Here we see the help of command ver. We are using the VER/? And press the Enter Output   If we cannot find the MS-DOS icon on the Desktop of Windows then we should take the following steps to display it:   1) Double click on the My Computer icon present. Immediately, the My Computer icon opens into a window.   2) Now double click on the Local Disk[C:]. Immediately, the content of Local Disk[C:] get displayed inside the window.   3) In the contents of the Local Disk[C:] , locate the Windows sub-folder and double click over it. Immediately, the content of Windows sub-folder get displayed.   4) Locate the MS-DOS icon.   5) Once the MS-DOS icon is located, move the mouse-pointer over it and press the left mouse-button.   6) Keeping the left mouse –button pressed, drag the icon onto the Desktop. Instantly, a message box gets displayed, asking “Do you wish to make a shortcut of the icon or not.”   7) Click on the Yes button. Immediately an icon of MS-DOS gets displayed on the Desktop.   8) Now Enjoy the DOS in your way.         DOS (Disk Operating System)   The DOS Prompt   Once the DOS is loaded into the RAM from the disk, it displays a prompt on the screen, indicating that it is ready to accept instruction from us. We can type all our command at this Prompt.   The DOS Prompt looks like:-   When we first turn on our computer, we will see some cryptic information flash by. MS-DOS displays this information to let us know how it is configuring our computer. We can ignore it for now. When the information stops scrolling past, we'll see the following: C:\>   This is called the command prompt or DOS prompt. The flashing underscore next to the command prompt is called the cursor. The cursor shows where the command we type will appear.   If our command prompt looks like the sample command prompt above, skip to the following section, "Typing a Command."   If our command prompt does not look like the example, type the following at the command prompt, and then press ENTER: cd \   Note that the slash leans backward, not forward. We will learn more about the cd command later in the tutorial. If our command prompt still doesn't look like the example, type the following at the command prompt, and then press ENTER: prompt $p$g   Our command prompt should now look like the example.         DOS (Disk Operating System)   Typing A Command in DOS   Typing a Command Here we explains how to type a command at the command prompt and demonstrates the"Bad command or file name" message.   • To type a command at the command prompt 1. Type the following at the command prompt (we can type the command in either uppercase or lowercase letters): nul   If we make a typing mistake, press the BACKSPACE key to erase the mistake, and then try again.   2. Press ENTER We must press ENTER after every command you type.   The following message appears: Bad command or file name   The "Bad command or file name" message appears when you type something that MS-DOS does not recognize. Because nul is not a valid MS-DOS command, MS-DOS displays the"Bad command or file name" message.   3. Now, type the following command at the command prompt: ver   The following message appears on our screen: MS-DOS version 6.22 The ver command displays the version number of MS-DOS.   Continue to the next section, where we will use the other command to view or manipulate the things. For animated presentation, click on the following links:(With Voice) Working With DOS,