Complete full good books to learn DOS, please

Complete full good books to learn DOS, please.

Other urls found in this thread:

templeos.org/
drdobbs.com/writing-ms-dos-device-drivers/184402277
stanislavs.org/helppc/
ctyme.com/intr/int.htm
web.archive.org/web/20001206212400/http://www.ibft.org:80/ibft052.txt
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

install 4dos
type help

learn templeOS instead

templeos.org/

also if you're already familiar with unix, installing gnu coreutils may help.

yes

cd and dir are all you need to play your shitty old video games

Playing old video games isn't what I want from DOS, sir.

Learn "DOS" is a bit vague, what are you trying to accomplish?

>learn DOS
you know that's a broad topic right?
do you mean just learning the shell commands, or writing complete DOS programs and device drivers?

What do you want from DOS, sir?

OP here. The second. Basically, understanding DOS at its fullest.

Monitoring this thread

What has your recon revealed?

Now, i've never had firsthand experience with the DOS kernel, but i have a bi of knowledge from inspecting the NT kernel, so they may be still useful.

>Layout
DOS has what looks like a unusual FS when compared to linux (You have unit letters instead of device files, and letters are the only way to access the unit), but the truth is that a SECOND filesystem, above everything else, that comprends everything DOS. In NT this is called GLOBALROOT (or \)
\ has below itself everything, and is divided between drives (C:, D:, etc), "special devices" [This is the linux way to refer to them, i don't recall them having a name on DOS or NT] (NUL, CON, LPT, etc) and the Registry (or the configuration.
Now, assuming the registry back in DOS was pretty much just system config and file associations, we won't look that.
Special devices work exactly like linux (NUL for /dev/null, LPT for /dev/lpt), and are used in the same way (NUL being the Zero Sink, LPT the parallel port)
cont.

that nobody knows a book on DOS like OP wanted

>Operation
DOS can interpret BASIC commands, so writing in BASIC your software is both convenient and pretty bad because
>basic.
Files with DOS BASIC scripts are referred as Batch Files, and can be launched and called just like any other program.
Writing any software for DOS is a matter of choosing
>basic
or using a non-shit language and a compiler, just like windows.
BASIC is not totally bad, as it can handle DOS commands natively (copy, cd, dir, whatever) and can be useful for creating (who would have thought) batch operations.
Otherwise just man up and learn C or, even better, ASM.

>Drivers
On supported hardware (read: ancient to today standards) DOS does not require additional drivers, and can work with it's own.
Normaly you don't NEED to create drivers, sine most unsupported hardware can work around the issue with dedicated software which handles READ/WRITE to the port, but if you need for some autistic reason to create a driver... well fuck, follow this dude's guide:

drdobbs.com/writing-ms-dos-device-drivers/184402277
And don't ask me anything, i never loved windows drivers.

>tl;dr
install gentoo

I don't know any complete books on the subject but you can get quite far just by googling the right keywords.
some very useful sites with detailed information:
stanislavs.org/helppc/
ctyme.com/intr/int.htm

special devices are also accessed though \dev\ on DOS. eg "\dev\con" for the console. "con:" is just a shorthand for the same device.

>DOS can interpret BASIC commands
false
>Files with DOS BASIC scripts are referred as Batch Files
false

>false
Well, that may be right.
I remember doing some stuff in a language similiar to basic though, but that may be fuzzy memory.

you're probably thinking of qbasic (the crippled version of quickbasic that came with msdos)
batch files (*.bat) are just shell scripts.

gotcha, thanks for correcting me.

>some very useful sites with detailed information
>ctyme.com/intr/int.htm

>Literally not a single word.

?

This text file:

web.archive.org/web/20001206212400/http://www.ibft.org:80/ibft052.txt

Then what on earth do you want with DOS?

>The first step is to turn your computer on by pressing the White Power
Button.

if you're learning dos batch... don't bother, go install a shell that doesn't suck and use that
if you're learning how to configure dos... most shit is domain specific because DOS is literally just a bunch of syscalls with a shell that gives a running process complete bare-metal control over the machine
if you want to learn dos basic, look up something on ibm basic (old dos machines) or qbasic (more recent ones)

why even bother, unless you're doing really low-level PC programming and don't feel like having your program boot the machine itself
if you want to do low-level programming without killing yourself, go install djgpp (installing is a mild pain IIRC because it's packaged retardedly last time I checked, but it's better than using Borland C or whatever and works in 32-bit mode so you don't need to deal with 16-bit mode bullshit breaking assumptions about how you expect C/C++ code to work)

Special Edition Using MS-DOS 6.22, 3rd Edition (2000)
Peter Norton's Complete Guide to DOS 6.22 (1994)
/thread