15 Mar
2001
15 Mar
'01
6:18 a.m.
I assume that as DOS is over 10 yrs old this is on topic ;-)
--
Regards
Pete
---------- Forwarded message ----------
1)
I am thy DOS, thou shall have no OS before me, unless Bill Gates gets a cut
of the profits therefrom.
2)
Thy DOS is a character based, single user, single tasking, standalone
operating system. Thou shall not attempt to make DOS network, multitask, or
display a graphical user interface, for that would be a gross hack .
3)
Thy hard disk shall never have more than 1024 sectors. You don't need that
much space anyway.
4)
Thy application program and data shall all fit in 640K of RAM. After all,
it's ten times what you had on a CP/M machine. Keep holy this 640K of RAM,
and clutter it not with device drivers, memory managers, or other things
that might make thy computer useful.
5)
Thou shall use the one true slash character to separate thy directory path.
Thou shall learn and love this character, even though it appears on no
typewriter keyboard, and is unfamiliar. Standardization on where that
character is located on a computer keyboard is right out .
6)
Thou shall edit and shuffle the sacred lines of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
until DOS functions adequately for the likes of you. Giving up in disgust is
not allowed.
7)
Know in thy heart that DOS shall always maintain backward compatibility to
the holy 2.0 version, blindly ignoring opportunities to become compatible
with things created in the latter half of this century. But you can still
run WordStar 1.0
8)
Improve thy memory, for thou shall be required to remember that JD031792.LTR
is the letter that you wrote to Jane Doe three years ago regarding the tax
deductible contribution that you made to her organization. The IRS Auditor
shall be impressed by thy memory as he stands over you demanding proof .
9)
Pick carefully the names of thy directories, for renaming them shall be
mighty difficult. While you're at it, don't try to relocate branches of the
directory tree, either.
10)
Learn well the Vulcan Nerve Pinch (ctrl-alt-del) for it shall be thy saviour
on many an occasion. Believe in thy heart that everyone reboots their OS to
solve problems that shouldn't occur in the first place.
15 Mar
15 Mar
10:03 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Peter Joules once stated:
I assume that as DOS is over 10 yrs old this is on topic ;-)
Released in 1981, yes it's on topic 8-)
2)
Thy DOS is a character based, single user, single tasking, standalone
operating system. Thou shall not attempt to make DOS network, multitask, or
display a graphical user interface, for that would be a gross hack .
Technically, it's a single taking, non-reentrant interupt based program
loader with a semi-reasonable file based API (2.x or higher) and that's
about it.
3)
Thy hard disk shall never have more than 1024 sectors. You don't need that
much space anyway.
That's a BIOS limitation; talk to IBM about that one---they only allocated
10 bits for sector number in the INT 13h disk IO call.
4)
Thy application program and data shall all fit in 640K of RAM. After all,
it's ten times what you had on a CP/M machine. Keep holy this 640K of RAM,
and clutter it not with device drivers, memory managers, or other things
that might make thy computer useful.
Again, IBM is to fault for that one---the IBM PC reserved the memory space
above $A0000 for video and BIOS extentions. There have been PCompatibles
running MS-DOS that had more memory available, but only programs that used
MS-DOS exclusively would work on those machines.
5)
Thou shall use the one true slash character to separate thy directory path.
Thou shall learn and love this character, even though it appears on no
typewriter keyboard, and is unfamiliar. Standardization on where that
character is located on a computer keyboard is right out .
While COMMAND.COM would only accept `\' as a path separator, MS-DOS would
internally use both `/' and `\' for path separators. There is an MS-DOS
call to change the option character (from the default of `/') but I don't
remember what it was off the top of my head.
7)
Know in thy heart that DOS shall always maintain backward compatibility to
the holy 2.0 version, blindly ignoring opportunities to become compatible
with things created in the latter half of this century. But you can still
run WordStar 1.0
Try 1.0. I still use an editor that was designed to run under MS-DOS 1.0.
10)
Learn well the Vulcan Nerve Pinch (ctrl-alt-del) for it shall be thy saviour
on many an occasion. Believe in thy heart that everyone reboots their OS to
solve problems that shouldn't occur in the first place.
Isn't that more of a Windows thing than an MS-DOS thing?
-spc (Doesn't remember MS-DOS crashing quite so much ... )
8684
days inactive
8684
days old
1 comments
2 participants
participants (2)
-
peter＠joules.org -
spc＠conman.org