Bit of a historical question: MS-DOS

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it
anymore. In MS-DOS, where were the standard external commands located?
The only thing I remember about MS-DOS was that the command.com was
located in the root directory (along with autoexec.bat, config.sys, and
the hidden files msdos.sys & io.sys). Slightly different names for the
PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys & ibmio.sys, but otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which
weren't built into the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or
something which contained these commands?

Yousuf Khan

From: "Yousuf Khan"

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it anymore. In MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I remember about
MS-DOS was that the command.com was located in the root directory (along with
autoexec.bat, config.sys, and the hidden files msdos.sys & io.sys). Slightly different
names for the PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys & ibmio.sys, but otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which weren't built into
the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or something which contained these commands?

Yousuf Khan

It depended upon the DOS falvour; PC/MS/DR.

However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Yousuf Khan"

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it anymore. In MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I remember about
MS-DOS was that the command.com was located in the root directory (along with
autoexec.bat, config.sys, and the hidden files msdos.sys & io.sys). Slightly different
names for the PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys & ibmio.sys, but otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which weren't built into
the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or something which contained these commands?

Yousuf Khan

It depended upon the DOS falvour; PC/MS/DR.

However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).


I normally kept mine in the C:\DOS directory, and made sure both it and
C:\$PROGDIR for all the programs were in the path. As long as all the
program locations were in the path, it didn't really matter where they were.

On a Toshiba laptop I had with DOS 3.3 in ROM when first booted from
new, it showed all the DOS commands in C:\, with everything else on D:\,
which was the Hard Drive, and the path was set to include D:\ by
default. This worked fine until you found a program which was hard coded
only to run from the C: drive, then I had to copy the contents of the
ROM onto the HD, and disable the ROM in the BIOS, losing about half a
megabyte of the 10 megabyte HD. I've still got the Toshiba DOS 6.xx
extensions on floppy somewhere, along with install floppies for all
MS-DOS versions except DOS 4.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 01/06/2012 4:57 PM, David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Yousuf

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it anymore. In MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I remember about
MS-DOS was that the command.com was located in the root directory (along with
autoexec.bat, config.sys, and the hidden files msdos.sys& io.sys). Slightly different
names for the PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys& ibmio.sys, but otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which weren't built into
the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or something which contained these commands?

Yousuf Khan

It depended upon the DOS falvour; PC/MS/DR.

However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).

Yeah, I know it was always available in the path, but was there a
default directory created to hold these commands? For some reason I'm
thinking that there may have been a C:\SYS or SYSTEM folder or
something? Or were they all placed into C:\ the root directory?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 01/06/2012 4:57 PM, David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Yousuf

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it
anymore. In MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I
remember about
MS-DOS was that the command.com was located in the root directory
(along with
autoexec.bat, config.sys, and the hidden files msdos.sys& io.sys).
Slightly different
names for the PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys& ibmio.sys, but
otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which
weren't built into
the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or something which
contained these commands?

Yousuf Khan

It depended upon the DOS falvour; PC/MS/DR.

However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).

Yeah, I know it was always available in the path, but was there a
default directory created to hold these commands? For some reason I'm
thinking that there may have been a C:\SYS or SYSTEM folder or
something? Or were they all placed into C:\ the root directory?

IME, the closest to a default was C:\DOS. Hold on a second, I'll check.

Sounds of distant rummaging. Sounds of cursing as many crates are
lifted and moved. Finds and starts DOS 5 based Toshiba T3200mains
powered "portable". Lights throughout the area go dim as the EGA
orange plasma screen lights up.

Blimey, it still works. Now *there's* a blast from the past. Tasword...

Yup. C:\DOS on the default DOS 5.0 installation, with Windows 3.0 in
C:\WINDOWS, and the extra Toshiba goodies in C:\TOSHIBA.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

In message , John Williamson
writes:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 01/06/2012 4:57 PM, David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Yousuf

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it
anymore. In MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I
[]
However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).
Yeah, I know it was always available in the path, but was there a
default directory created to hold these commands? For some reason I'm
thinking that there may have been a C:\SYS or SYSTEM folder or
something? Or were they all placed into C:\ the root directory?

IME, the closest to a default was C:\DOS. Hold on a second, I'll check.

I'll second that.

Sounds of distant rummaging. Sounds of cursing as many crates are
lifted and moved. Finds and starts DOS 5 based Toshiba T3200mains
powered "portable". Lights throughout the area go dim as the EGA
orange plasma screen lights up.

Loved the description!

Blimey, it still works. Now *there's* a blast from the past. Tasword...

Indeed - though I don't remember what it was: a word processor?

Yup. C:\DOS on the default DOS 5.0 installation, with Windows 3.0 in
C:\WINDOWS, and the extra Toshiba goodies in C:\TOSHIBA.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. -Richard

On 04/06/2012 14:24, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , John Williamson

Sounds of distant rummaging. Sounds of cursing as many crates are
lifted and moved. Finds and starts DOS 5 based Toshiba T3200mains
powered "portable". Lights throughout the area go dim as the EGA
orange plasma screen lights up.

Loved the description!

Bows :-)


Blimey, it still works. Now *there's* a blast from the past. Tasword...

Indeed - though I don't remember what it was: a word processor?

It was. I assume it would still work, if I had an Epson compatible
printer to go with the computer. I've also got a copy of Borland Sprint
which should still install, assuming the floppies are okay, which was my
preferred DOS wordprocessor.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

From: "Yousuf Khan"

On 01/06/2012 4:57 PM, David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Yousuf

I've been trying to remember this, and I honestly can't remember it anymore. In
MS-DOS,
where were the standard external commands located? The only thing I remember about
MS-DOS was that the command.com was located in the root directory (along with
autoexec.bat, config.sys, and the hidden files msdos.sys& io.sys). Slightly different
names for the PC-DOS version, such as pcdos.sys& ibmio.sys, but otherwise identical.
The standard external commands were those like chkdsk or xcopy, which weren't built
into
the command.com. Was there an MSDOS folder or something which contained these
commands?

Yousuf Khan

It depended upon the DOS falvour; PC/MS/DR.

However it was always located in the PATH (%PATH%).

Yeah, I know it was always available in the path, but was there a default directory
created to hold these commands? For some reason I'm thinking that there may have been a
C:\SYS or SYSTEM folder or something? Or were they all placed into C:\ the root
directory?

Yousuf Khan

They couldn't all be in the root as there was a limit of 64 files in the root.


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

David H. Lipman wrote:

They couldn't all be in the root as there was a limit of 64 files in
the root.

Depends on the storage media which was never mentioned. For example, a
360KB 5.25" floppy has 7 sectors allocated to the FAT, sectors are 512
bytes in size, and each entry (file or directory) consumes 32 bytes in
the FAT, so that floppy can hold 112 entries:

7 sectors * 512 bytes/sector / 32 bytes/entry = 112 entries

Summary of maximum entry count for MS/PC-DOS (root folder only):
8" 250 KB floppy: 68
8" 500 KB floppy: 68
8" 1.2 MB floppy: 192
5.25" 180 KB floppy: 64
5.25" 360 KB floppy: 112
5.25" 1.2 MB floppy: 224
3.5" 720 KB floppy: 112
3.5" 1.44 MB floppy: 224
3.5" 2.88 MB floppy: 240
3.5" 1.68 MB DMF floppy: 16 (*)
Hard disks FAT12/16/32: 512

(*) Microsoft apps were often distributed using these hence the need to
invent CAB files to deliver a larger number of files.

Not all media formats are listed above. Many more are listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk but I wasn't going to waste
time to check what were they max entry count in the root folder. For an
alternate listing of "Root dir entries" on media size, read
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/75131.

If long filenames are supported then the max count goes down due to use
of more bytes per entry in the FAT to store the alternate long name.

MS-DOS 2.0 introduced directories that could hold a lot more files and
[sub]directories: 4068 for FAT12, 64K for FAT16, 268,173,300 for FAT32
(using the default cluster sizes). That didn't alleviate the maximum
entry count in the root folder.

Are we having fun yet roaming down reminiscence lane?

From: "VanguardLH"

David H. Lipman wrote:

They couldn't all be in the root as there was a limit of 64 files in
the root.

Depends on the storage media which was never mentioned. For example, a
360KB 5.25" floppy has 7 sectors allocated to the FAT, sectors are 512
bytes in size, and each entry (file or directory) consumes 32 bytes in
the FAT, so that floppy can hold 112 entries:

7 sectors * 512 bytes/sector / 32 bytes/entry = 112 entries

Summary of maximum entry count for MS/PC-DOS (root folder only):
8" 250 KB floppy: 68
8" 500 KB floppy: 68
8" 1.2 MB floppy: 192
5.25" 180 KB floppy: 64
5.25" 360 KB floppy: 112
5.25" 1.2 MB floppy: 224
3.5" 720 KB floppy: 112
3.5" 1.44 MB floppy: 224
3.5" 2.88 MB floppy: 240
3.5" 1.68 MB DMF floppy: 16 (*)
Hard disks FAT12/16/32: 512

(*) Microsoft apps were often distributed using these hence the need to
invent CAB files to deliver a larger number of files.

Not all media formats are listed above. Many more are listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk but I wasn't going to waste
time to check what were they max entry count in the root folder. For an
alternate listing of "Root dir entries" on media size, read
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/75131.

If long filenames are supported then the max count goes down due to use
of more bytes per entry in the FAT to store the alternate long name.

MS-DOS 2.0 introduced directories that could hold a lot more files and
[sub]directories: 4068 for FAT12, 64K for FAT16, 268,173,300 for FAT32
(using the default cluster sizes). That didn't alleviate the maximum
entry count in the root folder.

Are we having fun yet roaming down reminiscence lane?

Nah, we haven't touched QEMM, Extended vs. Expanded RAM ;-)

Thanx for the data correction.

--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp