On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 18:34:33 -0000, "Trikky" <tri...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
Bill Hayles <bill...@ctv.es> wrote in message
news:
38569a09.1811348@news.ctv.es...
In pedantic mode, the first DOS that Microsoft produced was called
PC-DOS and was for the IBM PC. It wasn't until the first clones (such
as the COMPAQ) were produced that a version of PC-DOS was marketed
called MS-DOS.
I thought that PC-DOS ran with different command lines?
Erm, no.
Old fogeys starter for ten.
What was the main difference between PC-DOS and MS-DOS?
Erm...I'm not sure anbout the MAIN difference.......But the MEM command
didn't work in PC-DOS.......
The MEM command didn't come in until Version 5 - before then, there was
nothing to MEM except the first 640k, which CHKDSK checked for you.
And you had a lot more abilities with the DIR command.
I think you're comparing different versions. Or maybe you're getting
mixed up with the much later PC-DOS versions 6 and 7, which were brought
out by IBM itself in competition to MS-DOS. I'm talking about Microsoft
PC-DOS, which was installed on IBM machines, and Microsoft MS-DOS
installed on non IBM machines.
I'm rambling, but maybe you don't realise just how primitive PC-DOS
version 1 was.
For example, it knew nothing about hard disks. It recognised 8" and
5.25" floppies up to 360k capacity. These could each contain 127 files.
There were no subdirectories.
The first version that you would probably recognise as DOS would be
version 2.11, which came in both MS and PC versions. This recognised a
hard disk up to 32Mb capacity, and subdirectories. When you got to
version 3.3, you could have 3.5" disks and any number of 32Mb hard
disks. With version 4, you got bigger hard disks, and with version 5,
Extended memory was finally brought into use.
There was only one real difference between MS and PC flavours of the
same version, and it had to do with a hardware difference between IBM
and non IBM machines.
As a clue, I'll ask this teaser:
Very often, if you try to boot a computer which has no disks, either
hard or floppy attached, you will see the message:
ROM BASIC NOT FOUND. SYSTEM HALTED.
Why doesn't it just say "NO DISKS FOUND?"
El inglés loco
The mad Englishman of Benitachell
Bill Hayles
bill...@ctv.es
You'd probably want to