THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOSPersonal computers began appearing in the mid 1970's, initially ashobbyist toys that didn't even have keyboards or screens. The firstreal one, named Altair by a magazine editor's 12-year old daughter wholiked a Star Trek episode that took place in that solar system, wasbuilt around a jazzed-up calculator chip, the Intel 8080.Produced as a do-it-yourself kit by a company called MITS, it came with256 bytes of memory. Since it lacked a keyboard, you entered data byflipping switches on the front panel in binary sequence. Because it hadno screen, you had to decode the patterns of blinking lights itproduced. And it didn't let you store data permanently.Two teenagers, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who had started a companycalled Traf-o-Data to make Intel-based computers to measure how manycars ran across a rubber hose stretched across the road, saw a pictureof the Altos on the cover of an electronics magazine and developed aversion of BASIC for it. Gates upgraded AltairBasic later to includeprimitive file and disk-storage abilities.The pair changed the comapny name to Microsoft; by 1976 the industry hadprogressed to the point where Gates was railing against software pirates(although back then pirates were making copies of punched paper taperather than floppies). A few years later Gates became the worldsyoungest billionaire.Soon after the Altair introduction, some hard-driving salespeople becamethe market leaders with their Imsai 8080, another Intel-based machine,and the first computer aimed squarely at small businesses. To let usersstore data efficiently, Imsai developed a floppy disk drive whose motorsand circuits were run by a program called CP/M (Control Program forMicrocomputers), which had been licensed from Intergalactic DigitalResearch - later shortened to Digital Research. DR's Gary Kildall hadcreated CP/M while working for Intel, to scale down the PL/1 programminglanguage into a version that would fit on a microcomputer. Intel hadn'tseen much value in this brand new CP/M thingy and had given Kildall allrights to it.The early versions of DOS owe quite a bit to CP/M. In fact, things likethe .COM formats of CP/M and DOS and the basic system calls were sosimilar that programmers could easily switch up from CP/M. CP/M uses acommand interpreter called CCP (or Console Command Processor) and twofundamental system files called BDOS and BIOS to handle files and I/O.This arrangement is nearly identical to the DOS COMMAND.COM, IBMDOS.COMand IBMBIO.COM system trio. What was especially remarkable about CP/Mwas that it took up only 4k of space. DOS 1.0 doubled that and it hasbeen mushrooming ever since.Chain store magnate and leathercrafter Charles Tandy triedunsuccessfully to buy computers from Imsai, then ended up creating hisown system, the TRS-80, which contained a Zilog Z-80 chip, 4096 bytes ofmemory, and came fully assembled rather than in a kit. To shave a fewdollars off the price he designed it to work entirely in upper caseletters. Customers snapped them up as fast as Tandy could make them.What really kicked the microcomputer business into high gear, however,were a handful of visionary renegades from California and Florida.In 1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, whose early careers included astint peddling "black box" devices to circumvent telephone toll billingcomputers, bought some 6502 chips and built a few hundred copies of acomputer they christened the Apple I. It too worked only in upper caseletters. Their second-generation Apple II offered an optional floppydisk drive, and sold several orders of magnitude more. On reason forits success was a revolutionary program called Visicalc. Visicalcturned Apple's little computer into a powerful financial analysis andplanning machine.But not all operating systems run on all chips. CP/M worked on the 8080and Z80 chips but not on Apples 6502.Microsoft's Gates and Allen moved to Seattle to write programminglanguages for computers built around Intel and Zilog processor chips andrunning CP/M. Dismayed that their languages woudln't work on Apples,they considered translating them all to run on Apples proprietaryoperating system, an arduous job. Instead they joined the crowd,licensed CP/M, and sold it along with an add-in board that had a Zilogchip on it. Apple owners could stick the Microsoft boards in theircomputers and run any CP/M program.But Apple was an 8-bit machine and Gates and Allen felt Intel's new16-bit processors were the wave of the future. So did a local boardmaker called Tim Patterson who worked for Seattle Computer Products.All earlier processor chips managed data in 8-bit chunks. Intel's new8086/8088 chips finally doubled the processor power.Patterson's board had an 8086, and he needed a new 16-bit operatingsystem to take advantage of it. Digital Reserach had announced that itwas going to tweak CP/M into a 16-bit version, but Patterson couldn'twait. In early 1980 he started work on one of his own design calledQDOS (Quick & Dirty Operating System) that was to become 86-DOS (orSCP-DOS) and eventually just plain DOS. To make it relatively easy forprogrammers to translate CP/M softwrae to his system, he retainedfundamental CP/M file management structures and mimicked the way itloaded and ran programs. Patterson then added a device known as a FileAllocation Table (FAT) which Gates had used in Altair disk BASIC, and afew other refinements.--------------------------------------------------------------------DOS 1.0In late 1980, IBM approached Microsoft and revealed that it wasconsidering production of its own 8-bit computer. Vast helpings ofmoney, ego, pride and general corporate paranoia have tempered detailsof this exchange, but the popular version is that IBM wanted Microsoftto design a version of BASIC for its new machine that would be deliveredon a ROM chip inside the IBM chassis. Gates was happy to oblige andwanted to do a whole raft of languages, as the story goes, but arguedthat IBM should consider a 16-bit computer instead. When IBM asked whomade a 16-bit operating system, Gates is said to have suggested that IBMcontact Gary Kildall - and supposedly even dialled the phone to DigitalResearch himself.Here the tale gets very fuzzy. According to the one telling it, whenIBM trooped down to see Digital Research the next day, Kildall's wifeand lawyer were hesitant to sign IBM's strict non-disclosure agreements.Other stories had Kildall out flying his plane while IBM executiveswaited impatiently for him to land. Microsoft's own publications admitsthat Gates and Allen had heard rumours that Kildall was about to buy aversion of BASIC from one of Microsoft's competitors and give it awayfree with every copy of CP/M-86, which didn't exactly endear him tothem.In any event, Gates and Allen bought the rights to Patterson's 86-DOSfor around $50,000.00 and proposed to IBM that Microsoft provide BASIC,FORTRAN, Pascal, COBOL, an 8086 Assembler, and the 86-DOS operatingsystem for the new computer. IBM agreed in November 1980, and on August12, 1981 introduced the world to its new PC and its main operatingsystem, Microsoft's DOS 1.0, which IBM called PC-DOS. At theannouncement, IBM announced that users would someday be able to buy twocompeting operating systems: CP/M-86 or the UCSD-p System. But IBMpriced these much higher than DOS, and since they were late reaching themarket and received little support from other software vendors, theywent nowhere.Computer hardware isn't useful without software. And IBM initiallydidn't offer much software - EasyWriter, a bug-filled version of amediocre word processor; Adventure, a mainframe text game adapted to runon microcomputers, a DOS version of VisiCalc, some artless businesssoftware, a few Microsoft languages and one or two other packages.The most powerful and popular programs back then - dBase II and WordStar- ran only on CP/M systems. One of IBM's highest priorities was to makeit easy for software vendors to translate programs from CP/M to DOS, andit was smart enough to know that making it easy meant making the twooperating systems similar.Many of the DOS features that todays users truly hate - such as overlybrief eight-character filenames with three letter extensions, terseprompts like A>, and unfriendly or missing messages (such as the stonysilence in response to file deletions) were directly swiped from CP/M.So were underlying structures such as File Control Blocks (FCB's),Program Segment Prefixes, and reliance on CP/M's memory loadingaddresses.DOS did change a few CP/M quirks. File lengths that were rounded off inCP/M were reported precisely in DOS. Some commands were turned aroundto be more logical. Programmers could treat I/O to peripheral deviceslike printers and screens the same way that they handled files. DOS'svariable record lengths made disk storage and retrieval far moreefficient. DOS could load and run larger .EXE format files in additionto the smaller CP/M-standard COM-format files which were limited to 64k.And it could keep a program loaded but inactive in memory, so that userscould pop it onto their screens whenever they needed it . DOS relied ona FAT, first used by Bill Gates and Tom Patterson, to keep track ofwhere all the various pieces of a file were stored, and could read andwrite more than one piece of data at a time, which speeded up diskactivity significantly.DOS at least theoretically made it easier for programmers to createtheir own version of the COMMAND.COM user interface, although none hasever caught on. But the ability to run scripts of commands called batchfiles became very popular. When DOS reported inevitable errors, it didso in a slightly friendlier way than CP/M, and it handled severehardware errors far better. DOS also sniffed out new disks automaticallywhile CP/M forced users to log such changes manually, and it kept trackof the date files were created or changed.It also split the COMMAND.COM interface into several parts, a mixedblessing. When the PC was new, and IBM offered it with a maximum of 64kmemory, this feature was welcome since it let other space-hungrysoftware temporarily steal a few thousand characters of memory from DOS.When the user was finished with the software he'd have to insert his DOSdisk in drive A: so that the part of DOS that hadn't been stolen couldreload the part that had. Trouble was that a short time later userswere buying systems with ten times that much memory, and the amount ofspace freed up by this technique was relatively insignificant. Butfloppy disk users still had to contend with keeping a DOS disk handy toreload the "transient" stolen part.One of the worst things about the first IBM PC and its operating systemwas that it could store only 160k of data on floppy disks that wereclearly capable of storing twice as much. A standard floppy has twousable sides, but the first PC - and DOS - could only use one.The initial DOS release contained several nasty bugs. In mid-1982, IBMbegan shipping PC's with double-sided drives, and released DOS version1.1 to handle the new storage abilities and to fix several of the earlybugs. Microsoft then released its own generic upgrade which it calledMS-DOS 1.25.The initial release of DOS was tiny and relatively crude. Version 1.0TIME and DATE commands were separate short programs rather than part ofthe main COMMAND.COM interface. While the DOS 1.0 directory listingnoted the date a file was changed or created, it ignored the time. TheMODE command couldn't set communications speeds or protocols, or let thePC's parallel printer adaptor work with the many serial printers on themarket. The COPY command wouldn't join or concatenate several smallfiles into a larger one. The onscreen messages and prompts wereespecially ugly and cryptic.DOS 1.1 fixed all these problems, or at least made them less irritating.The biggest problem of all was that DOS was still constrained by itsCP/M heritage and its clanky internal structure. And although IBMdoubled the amount of disk storage space from 160k to 320k, users foundthis was far from enough. They demanded disks that were faster and moreefficient.----------------------------------------------------------------------DOS 2.0In March 1983, IBM announced its PC-XT, a beefed-up version of thestandard PC that came with three addtional internal expansion slots (fora total of eight), a ten-megabyte hard disk, and a new version of DOS -2.0.The new hard disk - which IBM referred to as a fixed disk - could holdthe equivalent of more than 31 double-sided floppies. But all thatstorage space introduced a new problem. DOS 1.0 and 1.1 had crammed allthe file information for each floppy disk into a single directory. Asingle-sided floppy had room for a maximum of 64 directory entries, andyou could fit only 112 on a double-sided diskette.Keeping track of all the files on a hard disk meant coming up with a newDOS file management and directory system. CP/M had dealt with largedisks by splitting them (or partitioning) them evenly into smaller ones,an inelegant and inefficient solution. But UNIX, an operating systemdeveloped by the phone company, could handle vast volumes of files withrelative style and ease. Microsoft had licensed UNIX, and was offering aversion of it called XENIX. At the heart of UNIX/XENIX was ahierarchical or tree-structured directory system that gave users lots offlexibility in dividing up the available storage space.Microsoft adapted this tree-structured system as the core of asignificant new incarnation of DOS - version 2.0. But it blunderedslightly. UNIX used a slash (/) to identify the subdirectory levelsthat acted as branches on the tree structure. But earlier DOS versionsused slashes as switches (command suffixes such as the /s in FORMAT /s)that turned optional features on and off. Microsoft substituted abackslash (\) to identify subdirectory levels, which eneded up confusinga whole generation of DOS and UNIX users, and caused much consternationabroad where foreign keyboards often didn't come with backslashcharacters.IBM and Microsoft also had to find a way to deal with an explosion inthe number and type of devices that manufacturers were stamping out forthe PC. One of DOS's main roles was to manage the communication betweenthe PC and anything else you could hook up to it. If DOS had to containexplicit internal tables and instructions for every possible device itwould end up being absurdly large and cumbersome.Microsoft designed a new version of DOS with hooks in it so thatmanufacturers of peripheral equipment could supply installable devicedriver programs to hook the new hardware effortlessly into the operatingsystem. Users could load these specific additional sets of instructionsinto DOS as needed, through a special CONFIG.SYS file. This file alsolet users customise their systems by telling DOS how much memory itshould devote to disk buffers, how many files could be openedsimultaneously, and how frequently DOS should check to see whether auser was hitting the Ctrl-Break panic button. It also made it easy forusers to load a replacement command processor if they weren't planningon using the standard COMMAND.COM, or tell DOS if they were storingCOMMAND.COM in an unusual place. And it gave users extended screen andkeyboard control with ANSI.SYS, a special device driver supplied byMicrosoft in an unsuccessful attempt to standardise certain parts of theuser interface across different computer systems.Version 2.0 introduced several new commands most users can't livewithout. Its hard to believe, but versions 1.0 and 1.1 didn't have anyway to clear the screen. CLS now does it. This version was also thefirst to offer batch file commands such as ECHO, IF, FOR, SHIFT andGOTO.DOS 2.0 also introduced a raft of commands and utilities to give userscintrol of hard disks although some, like the pathetic TREE command -designed to "display the entire directory structure" are a bad joke.Perhaps to compensate, IBM threw in a gem that has become a power usersbest friend - the mini-assembler in DEBUG. You can become an absolutecomputer whiz without ever having to learn a single thing about hexcodes or assembly language. But if you want to climb inside your systemand stomp on the gas pedal, there's no better way. Its a lot easierthan you think.One of the most significant changes in DOS 2.0 was the way it dealt withfiles internally. To remain compatible with CP/M, DOS 1.0 and 1.1 kepttrack of critical file information with a device called a File ControlBlock (FCB). But as programs became more sophisticated they were forcedto manipulate the data stored in FCB's directly, which was awkward andpotentially dangerous. And FCB's had no provision for subdirectorynames.DOS 2.0 introduced file handles as an optional way to streamline diskmanagement. Once DOS knew about a particular file in a partculardirectory, it could act on that file simply by using a two-charactershorthand code called a handle. In addition, DOS established fivespecial handles that made it a snap to switch inputs and outputs.Normally the keyboard and screen (which DOS collectively refers to asCON:) act as both the input and output. But DOS 2.0 let users"redirect" input or output to or from printers, files or other devices.And it allowed users to "pipe" streams of data through filters to dothings like turn uppercase files into lowercase, strip out extraneouscharacters, or sort records into alphabetical order.The sample filters DOS 2.0 provided are actually pretty useful. They'lllet you slog through files and skim out the text you want saved ordiscarded. They'll sort your directories (or any list of names, numbers,or items that have carriage returns at the end of each entry) lightningfast. And they'll paue your displays for you so you'll never again havetext scrolling off your screen too quickly to read.To top it off, DOS 2.0 provided rundimentary background processing. DOSwas originally designed as a sigle-tasking operating system that letusers do just one thing at a time. But the designers of version 2.0threw in a PRINT spooler command that could print out one file while auser was actively working on another.While spoolers are nothing new, this one was. Spoolers normally lop offa big chunk of RAM and trick DOS into sending files to memory that werereally destined for the printer. Then they wait for a quiet moment andre-route the files onto your printed page. When they're done printing,however, they still hold on to all the memory they've hogged - veryinefficient. The DOS PRINT command reads files off your disks and usesyour precious memory much more sparingly. It watches how you work, andabout 18 times each second, if you're not doing something at thatprecise moment, it sneaks a few characters at a time to the printer.Your computer is so fast that this "time slicing" technique makes itappear that it's doing two things at once, when it really alternating soquickly you don't notice it. And the best part is that if you happen tobe working on something that tales more of your computer's constantattention than usual, you can adjust how frequently the spooler tries tointercede.In addition, DOS increased the number of 512-byte sectors from eight tonine. While DOS kept the number of tracks at 40, this upped the storagecapacity of each disk from 320k to 360k. DOS 2.0 also let users addelectronic volume labels to their disks, gave them access to part of thememory called the environment, in which critical system settings weremaintained, made memory allocation more efficient, and threw in morethan two dozen new commands.With so many changes and features, you'd think a brand new version ofDOS would be filled with insidious bugs. And you'd be right. In March1984, a year after the PC-XT introduction, IBM released DOS 2.1 toexcise these software errors - and to handle a hardware error itproduced called the PC-Jr.The less said about the PC-Jr the better. While it provided morecolours onscreen in graphics mode than IBM's real microcomputers, andcame with three-voice sound that could play chords, it was utterlynon-standard inside and out. In fact, it used such a cheap, flimsy diskdrive that DOS 2.1 had to slow down the drive performance so the thingwouldn't crash.What's especially sad about all this is that lots of users still rely onDOS 2.1, which means they have to put up with unacceptably slow diskaccess times even though the're using machines that could handle muchhigher speeds. A pity, and another good reason to upgrade to a morerecent DOS version.Microsoft ended up producing versions 2.05, 2.11, 2.2 and 2.25 with anadded modicum of international time, date, keyboard and currencysupport. These may come in handy if you need to work with KoreanHangeul or Japanese Kanji characters; today Microsoft sells DOS in morethan 60 assorted languages.-----------------------------------------------------------------------DOS 3.0 and BeyondIBM's PC and PC-XT brought microcomputing into the mainstream ofAmerican business. But these machines were both relatively slow andsmall. In fact, they weren't really even true 16-bit computers. While anIntell 8088 CPU ticked away inside each one, their system bus - theconnecting pathway of wires that ties the CPU to all other parts of thesystem - was a bottleneck that worked in eight-bit chunks only.IBM introduced its first genuine 16-bit system, the PC-AT. Compared toIBM's earlier releases, this was a real rocketship of a computer. Insidewas an 80286 CPU with a trick up its sleeve - it could run everythingIBM and Microsoft could throw at it and it could also accomodateMicrosoft's ne operating system, OS/2. And it needed a new version ofDOS - 3.0.Engineers measure computer performance in many ways. Two primeindicators are the clock speed of the CPU and the average access time ofthe hard disk. The faster the clock, the faster a computer processesinstrauctions and the faster just about everything runs. The speedierthe hard disk access time, the sppedier it can read and write programsand data. The higher the clock speed and the lower the average accesstime, the faster the system.Both the PC and the PC-XT run at 4.77 MHz. IBM sold many differentbrands of hard disks for the XT, and the average access time wassomewhere between 80 and 115 milliseconds.The official clock speed of IBM's first AT was 6MHz, but users quicklyfound out that by replacing a socketed $4 quartz crystal on the mainsystem board they could boost performance to 8 or even 9 MHz without anyill effects. (IBM is famous for publishing ultraconservativespecifications and holding down performance a bit on purpose.) When IBMdiscovered that users were hot-rodding their systems, they wrote aprogram that acted as a speed governor and put it on a system ROM chipto stop tampering.All of IBM's AT hard disks ran at 40ms or better. Unfortunately, thefirst big batch of AT's came with CMI-brand drives that crashed inshockingly high numbers. Hard disks - rapidly spinning precision-craftedaluminium platters with magnetic coatings on both sides - need precisefeedback on where their magnetic read/write heads are located. If thelocation mechanism is off by even a tiny bit the heads can write baddata over good or wipe out important tables that tell the computer wherefiles are stored.Hard disk heads actually "fly" on a cushion of air directly above thesurface of the platters themselves. All decent hard disks retract or'park" the magnetic heads when the power goes off so they don't sinkdown and plough furrows into your data. To save money, CMI disks usedwhat many believe was an unreliable implementation of "wedge servo"technology. Most other hard disks used a dedicated positioning surface,a whole side of a hard disk platter contained no data and instead actedas a map to those that did. But not CMI's AT drives. And these drivesdidn't park the heads when you turned the power off. The heads justdropped down onto the data and scarped against it.IBM never really admitted doing anything wrong, but tens of thousands ofusers know different. If this black episode in computing history had asilver lining, it was that it taught hard disk users how absolutleyimperative it is to make frequent and comprehensive backup copies oftheir work.In any event, a PC-AT running at 8MHz was 67 percent faster than astandard PC or PC-XT. The PC-AT hard disk was twice as fast as thespeediest XT disk drive, which made everything seem a lot moreenergetic, and ended up turbocharging disk-intensive applications suchas database searches. On top of all that, the PC-AT could deal withmemory in 16-bit chunks, while the PC and PC-XT had to lumber along withhalf that amount. Clone makers soon started producing respectable ATimitations that chugged along even faster. To avoid falling behind thecompetition too much, IBM eventually had to nudge the performance upwardslightly each time it refined the AT design.IBM's newest PS/2 line of hardware and many high-performance clones onthe market make even the fastest AT look like its standing still. WithCPU sppeds of up to 25MHz, hard disk access times in the high teens, anda 32-bit bus that moves data four times as efficiently as the one in theoriginal PC, these hot new micros give refrigerator-sized minicomputersa good run for their money.The PC-AT was originally delivered with a 20-megabyte hard disk,although subsequent versions have enhanced both the speed and capacityof its hard disk. Still, 20Mb storage meant that backin it all up wouldtake 56 standard 360k floppies. The mind reels. Apparently, so didIBM's. It dropped a quad-density floppy disk drive, with 1.2Mb capacityinto each AT. IBM refers to these as high-capacity drives. Unhappy usershave called them something else, unprintable here.The PC-AT's new DOS, version 3.0, could handle the increased floppy diskstorage. But it also had to understand every other floppy format. In thespace of six years IBM had introduced single-sided and double-sideddrives, with eight or nine sectors, and in double or quad density, sodownward compatibility meant having to deal with: * 160k single-sided 5.25" * 180k " " * 320k double-sided " * 360k " " * 1.2M " "Well, there's compatibility and there's compatibility. Out of the 25different possible combinations of using the DISKCOPY command to moveinformation from one to the other, 16 won't work.What's more, IBM's PS/2 hardware uses 3.5" diskettes, a whole new ballgame. These smaller diskettes are sturdier, easier to transport, andvastly more efficient at storing information. IBM characteristicallycomplicated matters by producing two different and slightly incompatible3.5" disk formats, one that holds 720k and one capable of storing 1.44Mbof data. The 5.25" 320/360k format won't go away very quickly, since somany vendors have made it the standard for program distribution. Butthe PC-AT's 1.2Mb drive and the low-end PS/2 720k diskette are orphans. * note: This is US. 720k was very popular in NZ.All IBM microcomputers gave users a clock and calendar that could stampDOS directory listings with the time and date files were created or mostrecently updated. But users had to set the clock each time they startedtheir systems, unless they had purchased an add-in board with abattery-driven clock on it (and most did). The PC-AT came with its owninternal battery run clock/calendar, but it wasn't until DOS 3.3 tahtusers could reset it easily.Program developers live by a rule: "The software is never finished."Each release of DOS or any commercial application is quickly followed bya version with bug fixes, sppedups, and forgotten utilities. Marketconsiderations force manufacturers to ship everything at the earliestpossible date. Microsoft officially admits that DOS 3.0 "wasn't quiteready" at the introduction of the PC-AT. But it went out the dooranyway.Today, virtually every desk in America has a telephone in one corner.IBM's vision of the future puts a computer terminal next to it, andstrings all the terminals together electronically. Networking computersthis way has lots of advantages. It lets users "mail" messages andfiles to each other, and share centralised databases of information.Networks can also let users share expensive peripherals like plotters orlaser printers, but it doesn't make much sense installing three $1500network hookups to share one $1500 laser printer. Today networks areinteresting to a minority of users only - although the number grows asthe costs and headaches associated with using them are reduced. Networksintroduce their own special set of problems. Two users may reach forthe same database records at the same time, and something has to mediatethe conflict. Worse, giving users access to centralised informationmeans someone has to decide who gets access to what. And then somethinghas to keep track of the authorisation levels and enforce it all, andmake sure the right data is routed to the right place.Microsoft designed DOS version 3.0 to support the official IBM PCnetwork hardware. Unfortunately, the AT was ready before the networkfeatures of DOS were, and the Microsoft designers had to deactivatethese features in the final product. They finally turned them back onagain in version 3.1, released in November 1984. But DOS 3.1 was picky;it would handle only certain well-behaved networks.DOS 3.0 introduced a streamlined method for integrating FCB's andhandles. And while it provided a small handful of new features, none wasa radical departure from DOS 2.1. In fact, IBM stated in itsdocumentation that "DOS 3.0 does not replace DOS 2.1". But it did fix anasty 2.1 oversight, by making it harder for users to format their harddisks if they weren't careful. (It wasn't until version 2.0 that DOSeven asked for confirmation if users tried to delete all the files ontheir disk with a single ERASE *.* command.) Version 3.0 also let usersmake files read-only to prevent any inadvertent changes or deletions.Version 3.1 provided better "aliasing" features to combine drives anddirectories and to trick DOS into treating a subdirectory like a diskdrive. DOS 3.2 introduced users to 3.5" diskettes (although the tools itprovided to do this were downright awful), made it easier for them toupgrade DOS versions, and gave them one of the best but least-used newcommands, XCOPY.DOS 3.3, tossed off by IBM pitchment at the introduction of the PS/2 asan "interim solution" and the operating system for a string of dogsincluding the PC Convertible, Portable PC, and PC-Jr, deftly excised aheap of user headaches, and added a few sizzling new tricks.As all seasoned hard disk users are aware, working efficiently on a harddisk machine means pigeonholing related programs and data in electronicfile drawers called subdirectories. But users who are currently workingin one subdirectory often want to execute a program or look at datastored in another.Since version 2.0, users had been able to tell the PATH command to checkspecified subdirectories for executable files (with filenames ending inCOM, EXE or BAT). This let users run programs in other subdirectories,but it didn't let them get at distant data. Nonexecutable files remainedimmune to even the most comprehensive search, forcing power users topurchase commercial "path extender" programs, or struggle with the DOS3.1 SUBST command. The DOS 3.3 APPEND command made this processrelatively easy - and a lot cleaner.Serial ports are your system's main gateway to the world. Version 3.3let MODE cruise along with four serial ports rather than two (OS/2 canuse 8) and cruise along at 19200 baud, double the previous limit. AndIBM finally recognised that at least twice a year users need to resettheir internal IBM clocks and provided a way of doing this withouthunting down their Diagnostics disks, figure out which option adjuststhe time, and grind through all the irritating preliminary screens. The3.3 TIME and DATE commands automatically adjusted IBM CMOS memory toreflect the change.Another improvement was the newfound ability of the DOS 3.3 ATTRIBcommand to gang-process all files within a directory and its relatedsubdirectories, which made it easier to create backups and preventinadvertent file deletions or changes. Unfortunately, the same processused by ATTRIB can also hide files from casual snooping, but IBM'smanual won't show you how.The original DOS architects preferred working with 512-byte disksectors, and used a FAT to keep track of what data was in which sector.When they designed the FAT they used 16-bit addresses, which allowed amaximum of 65,536 (64k) table entries. This clamped a firm 32Mb limiton the size of any physical hard disk (512 x 65,536 = 33,554,432 bytes).To get around this limit, manufacturers either had to increase thesector size, which made their hardware non-standard and relativelywasteful, or come up with an entirely new file management scheme, whichended up being even more non-standard.IBM tuned DOS 3.3 to divide physical hard disks into smaller "logical"drives, and fixed the FDISK command to create extended DOS partitions inaddition to the primary ones they were able to carve out previously.Each extended partition could be further subdivided into logical drives32Mb or smaller, with their own drive letters. Compaq quickly made iteven easier to use enormous hard disks, by introducing DOS 3.31 thatboasted 32-bit FAT addresses.To expedite directory searches with the new generation of larger harddisks, DOS 3.3 provided a filename cache utility called FASTOPEN.Caches keep track of things in memory rather than on disk, which speedsmany processes up significantly. FASTOPEN notes the location of filesand subdirectories (which are really just special classes of files) thefirst time you hunt for them, and then directs DOS to the exact spot onthe disk the next time you have to deal with them.The DOS BACKUP command had always been so pathetic that an entireindustry of third-party backup software has evolved to fill the gap.While the version 3.3 enhancements aren't going to put those developersout of business, they will bring some users back into the fold. Underprevious DOS versions you had to format a tall stack of disks beforestrating the backup process. If you ran out of formatted disks halfwaythrough you had to abort and either find a way to catch up, or start thewhole elaborate, time-consuming procedure all over again.In DOS 3.3 the BACKUP command can summon the FORMAT command and prepareunformatted disks if necessary - with certain irritating restrictions.And you have to limit the disks and drives you use; it still can't mixand match. The DOS 3.3 BACKUP works faster and more efficiently thanolder versions, by copying all smaller files into a single enormous one,and by creating a guide file that tells DOS how to take the big fileapart and restore it properly again later. It also creates a log filetelling you what it did where.The DOS 3.3 RESTORE gives you added flexibility in restoring backed-upfiles by date and time, as well as those deleted or changed since youlast backed up, or files that are no longer on the target disk. Betteryet, while older versions of RESTORE let you accidentally obliterateyour system files (IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM and COMMAND.COM or theirMS-DOS counterparts) with older backed-up versions, DOS 3.3 RESTOREwon't. Inadvertently mixing versions of hard disk system files is likereplacing a heart surgeon in the middle of an operation, with a treesurgeon.Batch files can take the anguish out of tricky or repetitive tasks. Thefirst thing most power users do when they create a batch file is turnoff the display by issuing an ECHO OFF command. This stops DOS fromlittering your screen with the frantic prompts, messages, and otherelectronic graffiti a batch file generates. But users had no authorisedway of preventing this ECHO OFF command from adding to the screenclutter itself. Version 3.3 users can prevent such clutter simply byprefacing any command with an @ symbol.in addition, DOS 3.3 could CALL one batch file from within another,execute it, and then return to the original batch file and continueexecuting it. Doing this kind of "nesting" under previous versions ofDOS meant that each batch file had to load its own separate version ofCOMMAND.COM to do its work, exit, and drop back to yet another version -which was sort of like restarting a movie every time a latecomer walkedinto the theatre. DOS 3.3 also documented environment variables for thefirst time, which let users pass information back and forth fromapplication to application.DOS 3.0 to 3.2 came in five international flavours. By executing theappropriate KEYBxx command, users could transform the keyboard intoBritish, German, French, Italian or Spanish modes. With version 3.3,IBM totally revamped the way DOS handled foreign alphabets. IBM'smanuals have gotten a bit better over the years, but the three abtruseand seemingly contradictory chunks on this international supportvirtually defy comprehension. IBM prefaced its long appendix-liketreatment of the topic with the caveat "You can use code page switchingwithout fully understanding everything about it." After poring over thetext, you'll know why this was included. And if you live in the UnitedStates, you'll take one look, put your hand over your heart, and say,"Thank God we're Americans."For the first time, DOS 3.3 set a default number of disk buffers basedon your system's configuration. Under previous versions, it assumedevert PC and XT user really wanted only two and every AT user onlythree. DOS will now sniff out what hardware you have available, andallocate from two buffers (minimal RAM, no hi-density floppies, 3.5"diskettes, or hard disks) to 15 (and machine with more than 512k ofRAM). If you're using a big hard disk, you may want more than 15.Better yet, try a commercial file cache program.The FutureIBM and Microsoft continue to add and adapt messages and prompts; theinfamous and ubiquitous DOS error message "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" becamea more chilling "Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?" under DOS 3.3. This isn'texactly friedly. When Microsoft originally designed DOS it publishedall the specifications so that other manufacturers could replace theCOMMAND.COM user interface with something different, such as a visualshell. Several amateurs have tried, but nothing has come of it.Microsoft itself tried an easier interface called WINDOWS, but usershave resisted, calling the interface overly large, ungainly, and slow.Microsoft and IBM have adapted Windows as a graphic front-end calledPresentation Manager for OS/2.DOS needs all sorts of help; way back when the EGA was first introduced,for instance, users complained that the MODE command couldn't deal withany of the new graphics settings, such as 43 or 50 lines of text, or thefar better colour selection. Now that VGA is becoming the norm, DOSstill doesn't directly handle anything better than CGA.(PC-DOS 4.0 and 4.01 have been released since this was written; MODE nowsupports high resolution text displays and multiple serial ports.However few users have switched to 4.0 or 4.01 in New Zealand,particularly after the OS was slammed by the foreign press as being fullof bugs, inconsistent in its user interface, and a memory hog. SomeWellington BBS users have successfully changed to DOS 4.01, and haveexperienced no real problems in their non-demanding environment. Mostusers with only 640k will probably prefer to stick with DOS 3.2 or 3.3,and those with large disks to 3.31.)[And since *that* was written, most new computers are sold with a 40MBdisk minimum and DOS 4.01. The product is now quite stable. DOS 5.0'srelease is imminent.]----------------------------------------------------------------------Downloaded from The Cave III, where the SysOp had uploaded it. Don'tknow whether he wrote it, or found it somewhere, but it's not bad!