What do you do with MS-DOS?

Question

I've only every used a Graphical User Interface before and I don't have a clue what to do with a Command Line User Interface. Could you start me up please or just give me some basic commands? I'm using version 5.1.2600.

I'm playing around a bit now. I discovered that cls is clear screen.

What's a directory?

Thanks! I've cracked it!

Thanks! I've cracked it!

Answer 1

MS DOS was the precursor to Microsoft Windows but using fantastically less memory and processing power than Windows does.

Everything runs from the Command Line. Generally indicated by
C:>

Basic commands include CD (Change Directory), DEL (Delete), DIR (List directory)

C:> MD TEMP {Return} (Make a directory)
C:> CD Temp {Return} (Change directory to temp)
C:/temp> DIR {Return} (List files in the temp directory)

A directory is the equivalent of a folder in Windows.

You get the idea. The link below give you the commands, but also a history and some more detail guidance.

Answer 2

Be very careful with DOS commands.

One mis-typed command and an inadvertant hitting of the Enter key and you can mess your computer up real bad.

I too recommend that if you are not familiar with DOS or don't have a book/manual to guide you, stay away from it.

You can do anything you ever need to do right from the Start > Run commands.

Answer 3

Disclaimer: Everything here applies to my machine, a 200mhz Pentium 3 128mb memory with Windows 98 SE installed over MSDOS 6.22. Newer versions of Windows may not have these things available.
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MSDOS stands for MicroSoft Disk Operating System. It wasn't the first DOS. The first was from Digital Research. The owner, Gary Kyndall sold it to Bill Gates, who renamed if MSDOS, but it was essentially the same. All text based, zero graphics, zero color only black and white or green and black or amber and black depending on the phosphor in your CRT. Digital Research went on to do the next generation, CP/M, Control Program for Microcomputers, which Billy boy copied to upgrade the ODS he bought to the MSDOS which started the company. The command prompt we see today is sort of a blend between the original DOS and CP/M. Until someone write a programming language for themachines, like BASIC, for example, there wasn't much a novice could do. People like me write the assembly language which became an editor, or a spreadsheet, or whatever. These programs were incredibly efficient. Wordstar, for example, ran in less than 16K of memory, leaving at least 40K of memory for a document after the 8K of overhead for DOS, and Wordstar could swap memory to disk so in theory, a document could be almost as big as the floppy would hold, at the time 320K. An averave page of text, like you find in a book, that density of wordage, takes up 1.5-2K which means you could have a document over 150 full size typewriter type pages on disk, and it was FAST, unlike the bloated programs of today. I'll get off my soapbox now...

My first computer which ran DOS and later MSDOS was a 2mhz Z80 microprocessor with 2K ROM and 62K RAM of memory and 2-5+1/4" double density floppy drives, for a whopping 320K each.

That is no mistake up there, a Z80 can only handle 64K of memory since it has a 16 bit wide address buss, which means 65536 address locations, 00000-65535. Anyway, prior to IBM and Windows, that's all there was. However, there is still this holdover which Billy boy has tried to kill, the DOS prompt, on numerous occasions. He has announced ""DOS is dead!" at least 5 times that I know of

I have a Win98SE setup so I can boot right up to either a command prompt or into Windoze. Whether you can boot to a prompt or have to open a command window, do it.

In the window should be a copyright message and the cursor blinking after something like this:

C:\WINDOWS>_

the underscore is where the blinking cursor should be. Type in the single 4 letter word HELP and press enter. You should get a full screen and then some which is a brief help system for every DOS command including the option switches if any, for each. Your mouse may or may bot work here. Try it. If it is not full screen, press ALT+ENTER to toggle between full screen and a window. A DOS prompt works better full screen, easier to read.

Be aware of this, in some cases there is NO safety net. Some commands will NOT ask you if you are sure before taking an action. A file deleted at the command prompt does NOT go into the recycle bin for example. There are ways to recover a deleted file done this way, but are too complicated to explain here.

There are a wealth of books on the subject. Check out your local used book store, Goodwill, Value Village or any other thrift store that recycles books back to the public and you can get a reference for pennies on the dollar.

You also have a BASIC interpreter, QBASIC available to you. This is version 1.0, but still, I learned to program in BASIC using this interpreter.

At the prompt enter the word QBASIC and press enter. You should see an opening window for the BASIC interpreter offering to let you see the "survival guide" which is a brief intro to BASIC and what the interpreter can do. When you get to the blank screen type in these 3 lines:

10 for x = 1 to 10
20 print x
30 next

The interpreter will correct your work, like capitalize keywords FOR, TO, NEXT, and PRINT.. This short program tells the interpreter to print the value of x and loop back and do it again until it has done this 10 times. RUN the program. Your mouse should work, but if it doesn't, the keyboard shortcut is ALT+R. Select START and observe the program run. It will stop and pause waiting for to hit a key so you can observe the program output before returning to the interpreter. In this case the output was simply the value of the variable x for each time the loop was executed.

There, you wrote a program which counted to 10 and printed the resullts on the screen. Congratulations, you are now a computer programmer. Hang out your shingle.

This is just to get you started. These days, it is the old farts like me that remember or even know this stuff. My start in computers came from writing assembly langiage for dedicated machine controllers, like the chip which makes your microwave oven so smart, before the Altair 8800, the first kit computer to hit the market, years before Billy boy came onto the scene.

Anyway, I could write a book here. Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any other questions. Just make sure your 360 profile privacy settings are set to receive incoming messages otherwise I can't reply without your email address.

Answer 4

In the DOS window type edit . This will open up a text editor. Using the editor, type:

echo off
cls
echo hi there
pause
beep
cls

Then go to file, save as, "test.bat" (this is a batch file - msdos runs on batch files). Click on file, exit. Then in the dos screen simply type "test" and hit return to run this batch file.

Also, in the dos screen if you type "help" or "?" you will get a list of dos commands and their uses.

Answer 5

Hi. Start with 'dir /w /p' (Directory in wide and page mode'). Then try a '?' or 'h' or 'help'. For an example, 'dir /?' will give all the modifiers for 'dir'. There should be a 'bin' directory that will contain all of the commands. Good luck!

Answer 6

With today's operating systems there is little need to use MS-DOS style commands. If you don't know how do use them I would advise you stay well away. There are some very power full commands that can delete files and render your system un bootable.

Answer 7

leave it alone , it messes with yer PC if yer don't get it right

suggest you get a book read it and then play around :)

Or go buy an old commodore 64 Vic 20 or an Atari etc they will teach you the basics

Answer 8

The best thing to do is to type help at your dos prompt.

C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxx>Help

Trying searching for dos help on a good search engine aswell

Answer 9

it is just another operating system which isn't gui based.

cddirectory
will move to that directory
delfilename will remove a file
del *.* will delete everything in that directory