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DOS Power Tools
''DOS Power Tools: Techniques, Tricks and Utilities'' is a book by Paul Somerson, first published in 1988 by Bantam Books and sponsored by '' PC Magazine''. The book offers a guide to approaching MS-DOS (and its cousin PC DOS) as well as various tricks and utility programs—the latter provided as x86 assembly source code listings and as compiled .COM and .EXE executables on an accompanying floppy disk (later expanded to three disks). The book was a best-seller and received positive critical reception. The first edition of the book was written to accompany versions of DOS from 2.0 through 3.3. The book was revised in 1992 to support version 5.0. Contents The first edition of ''DOS Power Tools'' is divided into five parts. The first part, "Getting Up to Speed", comprises six chapters discussing the background and development of DOS; the basic principles of DOS and its interactions with hard drives; an introduction to binary and hexadecimal encoding and x86 instructions; PC k ...
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MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as "DOS" (which is also the generic acronym for disk operating system). MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system. IBM licensed and re-released it in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in its PCs. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, the two products diverged after twelve years, in 1993, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax, and capabilities. Beginning in 1988 with DR-DO ...
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ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international standards so that American products can be used worldwide. ANSI accredits standards that are developed by representatives of other standards organizations, government agencies, consumer groups, companies, and others. These standards ensure that the characteristics and performance of products are consistent, that people use the same definitions and terms, and that products are tested the same way. ANSI also accredits organizations that carry out product or personnel certification in accordance with requirements defined in international standards. The organization's headquarters are in Washington, D.C. ANSI's operations office is located in New York City. The ANSI annual operating b ...
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CONFIG
Configuration or configurations may refer to: Computing * Computer configuration or system configuration * Configuration file, a software file used to configure the initial settings for a computer program * Configurator, also known as choice board, design system, or co-design platform, used in product design to capture customers' specifications * Configure script ("./configure" in Unix), the output of Autotools; used to detect system configuration * CONFIG.SYS, the primary configuration file for DOS and OS/2 operating systems Mathematics * Configuration (geometry), a finite set of points and lines with certain properties * Configuration (polytope), special kind of configuration for regular polytopes * Configuration space (mathematics), a space representing assignments of points to non-overlapping positions on a topological space Physics * Configuration space (physics), in classical mechanics, the vector space formed by the parameters of a system * Electron configuration, the di ...
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Command-line Flag
A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and providing information to them as to what actions they are to perform. In some cases the invocation is conditional based on conditions established by the user or previous executables. Such access was first provided by computer terminals starting in the mid-1960s. This provided an interactive environment not available with punched cards or other input methods. Today, many users rely upon graphical user interfaces and menu-driven interactions. However, some programming and maintenance tasks may not have a graphical user interface and use a command line. Alternatives to the command-line interface include text-based user interface menus (for example, IBM AIX SMIT), keyboard shortcuts, and various desktop metaphors centered on the pointer (usual ...
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GW-BASIC
GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the original IBM PC. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft. The language is suitable for simple games, business programs and the like. Since it was included with most versions of MS-DOS, it was also a low-cost way for many aspiring programmers to learn the fundamentals of computer programming. Microsoft also sold a BASIC compiler, BASCOM, compatible with GW-BASIC, for programs needing more speed. According to Mark Jones Lorenzo, given the scope of the language, "GW-BASIC is arguably the ''ne plus ultra'' of Microsoft's family of line-numbered BASICs stretching back to Altair BASIC and perhaps even of line-numbered BASIC in general." With the release of MS-DOS 5.0, GW-BASIC's place was taken ...
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Crash (computing)
In computing, a crash, or system crash, occurs when a computer program such as a software application or an operating system stops functioning properly and exits. On some operating systems or individual applications, a crash reporting service will report the crash and any details relating to it (or give the user the option to do so), usually to the developer(s) of the application. If the program is a critical part of the operating system, the entire system may crash or hang, often resulting in a kernel panic or fatal system error. Most crashes are the result of a software bug. Typical causes include accessing invalid memory addresses, incorrect address values in the program counter, buffer overflow, overwriting a portion of the affected program code due to an earlier bug, executing invalid machine instructions (an illegal opcode), or triggering an unhandled exception. The original software bug that started this chain of events is typically considered to be the cause of the ...
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FDISK
In computing, the fdisk command-line utility provides disk-partitioning functions, preparatory to defining file systems. fdisk features in the DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and in certain ports of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD and macOS for compatibility reasons. In versions of the Windows NT operating-system line from Windows 2000 onwards, is replaced by a more advanced tool called diskpart. Similar utilities exist for Unix-like systems, for example, BSD disklabel. Implementations IBM PC DOS IBM introduced , Fixed Disk Setup Program version 1.00, with the March 1983 release of the IBM PC/XT, the first PC to store data on a hard disk, and the IBM Personal Computer DOS version 2.0. Version 1 could be used to create one FAT12 DOS partition, delete it, change the active partition, or display partition data. writes the master boot record, which supported up to four partitions. The other three were intended for other op ...
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XCOPY
In computing, XCOPY is a command used on IBM PC DOS, MS-DOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, FreeDOS, ReactOS, and related operating systems for copying multiple files or entire directory trees from one directory to another and for copying files across a network. Overview XCOPY stands for ''extended copy'', and was created as a more functional file copying utility than the copy command found in earlier operating systems. XCOPY first appeared in DOS 3.2. While still included in Windows 10, XCOPY has been deprecated in favor of robocopy, a more powerful copy tool, which is now supplied with the Microsoft Windows Server and Desktop operating systems. DR DOS 6.0 and Datalight ROM-DOS include an implementation of the command. The FreeDOS version was developed by Rene Ableidinger and is licensed under the GPL. J. Edmeades developed the Wine-compatible version that is included in ReactOS. It is licensed under the LGPL. Compression Since Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10, a compress ...
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GRAPHICS
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, in typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and recreational software. Images that are generated by a computer are called computer graphics. Examples are photographs, drawings, line art, mathematical graphs, line graphs, charts, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics often combine text, illustration, and color. Graphic design may consist of the deliberate selection, creation, or arrangement of typography alone, as in a brochure, flyer, poster, web site, or book without any other element. The objective can be clarity or effective communication, association with other cultural elements, or merely the creation of a distinctive style. Graphics ca ...
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Enhanced Graphics Adapter
The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) is an IBM PC graphics adapter and de facto computer display standard from 1984 that superseded the CGA standard introduced with the original IBM PC, and was itself superseded by the VGA standard in 1987. In addition to the original EGA card manufactured by IBM, many compatible third-party cards were manufactured, and EGA graphics modes continued to be supported by VGA and later standards. History EGA was introduced in October 1984 by IBM,High-Resolution Standard Is Latest Step in DOS Graphics Evolution, ''InfoWorld'', June 26, 1989, p. 48News Briefs, Big Blue Turns Colors, ''InfoWorld'', October 8, 1984 shortly after its new PC/AT. The EGA could be installed in previously released IBM PCs, but required a ROM upgrade on the mainboard. Chips and Technologies first product, announced in September 1985, was a four chip EGA chipset that handled the functions of 19 of IBM's proprietary chips on the original Enhanced Graphics Adapter. By that No ...
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ANSI Color
ANSI escape sequences are a standard for in-band signaling to control cursor location, color, font styling, and other options on video text terminals and terminal emulators. Certain sequences of bytes, most starting with an ASCII escape character and a bracket character, are embedded into text. The terminal interprets these sequences as commands, rather than text to display verbatim. ANSI sequences were introduced in the 1970s to replace vendor-specific sequences and became widespread in the computer equipment market by the early 1980s. They are used in development, scientific, commercial text-based applications as well as bulletin board systems to offer standardized functionality. Although hardware text terminals have become increasingly rare in the 21st century, the relevance of the ANSI standard persists because a great majority of terminal emulators and command consoles interpret at least a portion of the ANSI standard. History Almost all manufacturers of video termi ...
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