Do any of you dinosaurs out there speak DOS?

Question

I had one of the first PC's ever made, which was long before Windows or the internet ever existed. They were DOS-based computers. I went to the trouble to learn DOS, which is a pretty difficult language, and I speak it fluently. There are only a few of the commands I didn't learn to use. Although it is now antiquated, it is still very useful in many situations. It would be nice to hear from some of you who did the same.

Answer 1

I wouldn't call myself a dinosaur, but I guess most would. I learned on a commodore64, and an amiga. Then the 286 ibm clone. I love DOS. and even with all this Window stuff, still go to DOS quite often to fix problems. It's much better to bypass the GUI interface and go straight to the place that makes it run.

Answer 2

I learned DOS more than 15 years ago, not that long after getting out of high school. Had a Tandy...Commodores were still around, because I remember the name, but they were on their way out. I got rid of my Tandy a couple years after I bought it.

To the person that said Internet was older than Windows, they are correct. People get "Internet" and "World Wide Web" confused. The Internet was created almost (30?) years ago by the government. It's just a means to connect remote computers together. The "World Wide Web" is really just a non-technical term that expresses the idea that computers are now connected all over the world, and as a term, refers to not just the network of computers but all the information on the Internet, too (like web sites).

I forgot almost all DOS by the time I got a PC a few years ago, after Windows ME came out. I've since learned a little of it again, using it for formatting and the like. Don't have much use for it anymore, as Windows doesn't run on DOS anymore.

Answer 3

Been there,done that. Much more comfortable with T-Dos and T-basic, though. Tandy ruled in those days. Gosh, I may still have some software stored on those C20 cassettes!!! Some (many) years ago I gave a symposium at the Dayton Hamvention for the XYL's and YL's, armed with a Fairchild RPG calculator, a TI programable calc and a Tandy trash 80 to demonstrate what computers were going to do in their ol' man's Ham shack.

Answer 4

I did a lot with DOS back in the day. You had to learn it to inch out all the room from the low memory areas you could; the automatic settings were terrible. It wasn't that great for scripting though.

I must add, that the Internet started before DOS. Before the PC. I would even hazard to say, before the Minicomputer. Hell the Internet (Arpanet) was around even before the cheesy BBSs, remember those?

Answer 5

So exactly what DOS commands did you want to ask about. Yes, I used MS DOS from the early days to it's final versions. I used it under Windows 3.1 until early 1996. The jump into Windows 95/98 came when I wanted to get ON THE NET.

When you are done, just type the CLS command.

Answer 6

Well lets see I knew DOS before they put the MS in front of it.
Remember DR DOS? I knew Dec, Unix, and CPM command languages before even that. And yes I still use it as in "cmd" to this day, and almost everyday. The build group I work with write most of their build scripts in it, I personally switched to Perl when changing from Unix to Windows, basically it was just to primitive for me to write all of my automated build system in.

But I doubt that I could get my job done without the command line.

Answer 7

Started on DOS 2.1

http://www.tutorialguide.net/operating_systems/dos/

Actually, I started on DOS/VSE and MVS, done Unix for longer than I can remember, still love OpenVMS best of all!

Do you remember Windows 1.0 and WFW 3.11? How about
Xenix, Oasis, Theos, and so many more? I do.

Have fun but be safe!

Answer 8

i'm not incredibly valuable, Dolphins are incredibly cool, yet considering the fact that Dinosaurs are extinct, it might in all risk be very exciting to be waiting to talk a language that now not exists!!!!! i think of the two would be superb!

Answer 9

del *.*