The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
I Didn't Know That....
Tom Coleman

0n almost every course we run we find students who know either too much or too little to be on that particular course. It appears that we have been relying on self assessment by the applicants. Our own experience tells us that we should know better by now. 

Take, for instance, a "Using DOS" course. We tell enquirers that it is for those who have done a "Starting Computing" course and have had at least six months hands on since then. 

This means that anyone who has been running Lotus or AutoCad all day for the last year or two thinks they are a candidate for a "Using DOS" course. 

Our experience is that they are candidates for a "Using Lotus" or whatever course but not a "Using DOS." All too often they have forgotten anything they ever learned about subdirectories. Batchfiles area mystery and at the command line they get confused between / and \. 

I had a student one time who could do anything at all with a word processor but did not know how to copy a disc. All error messages were given the Big Red Switch treatment. 

For the prospective student and the just curious the following self assessment is offered as a guide. 

Please note the word guide. It is not dogma. It gives you an approximation only. There is no scoring. [This is not Womans Day or Playboy) 

It is worth reminding members that MPCUG takes no responsibility for your acts of foolishness. If you blunder in entering every command in this article you will be in deep poo.

1. Can you sit down NOW and write a batchfile that would:

  • Display a message giving appropriate instructions.
  • Run CHKDSK.COM on any drive
  • Terminate leaving you in the same drive and directory as you started.
and be fairly confident that it would run ok first time. 

If you are confident that you can do it then you do not need our "Using DOS" course because that is about where we end. We leave the students to practice in their own good time. However it would be nice for you to sit down and do it Then we know that you are not just bragging. 

If you could have a go but would be feeling your way and may have to pick someone's brains then you should do the "Using DOS" course. If you have no idea then its the "Starting Computing" for you.

2. Your prompt is C:\DOS\UTILS\> This will be the default prompt

  • What does DOS mean by the default anything?
  • What would be the effect of your entering Copy A:\BANG.DOC?
  • Suppose you wanted to copy the same file to D:\HORSE Without changing your prompt can you do it with only one press of the ENTER key? If ANSWER < YES goto StrtComp. (If you want to be pedantic there are two possible targets. If you choose to be pedantic you may answer the question both ways)
3. What would happen of you had the above prompt and put in the following commands?
cd\
del DOS

Warning ..... Warning ...... Warning .......  Don't Try it to find out.
If you don't know why, go and do the Starting Computing course

4. What is the difference in the effect between
FORMAT C: /S
and
 format c: /s

If you do not know, try it with a floppy first. (That means changing the C: for A: and signing up for a Starting Computing course)

6. If you acquired a serial printer and were told that it used 4800 baud 8data bits and nil parity, would you know what DOS commands to use to set it up? Don't worry if you don't know exactly how to set up the command. You can look that up in the manual. Do you know where to look? That is mentioned on the Starling Computing course. So is this next bit.

6. What is a good general purpose grade of paper to use on your general purpose dot matrix printer.

7. How many of the following do you know the effects of: The operative word is KNOW. Not just make an intelligent guess at. It is confidence you should be measuring here. You can assume the same prompt as we started with. How many would not work under any circumstances. How many would work with a different prompt.

cd\   cd..   cd c:\dos 
cd ..\horse cd a:\horse.doc

dir\w         dir a: /w 
dir c:\dos\c*.*

md a:\havenice.day 
cd a:\havenice.day

We all know (don't we?) how many letters there are allowed in a filename. (OK you tell me)

  • How can you get a space into a filename (Careful!)
  • Can you quickly list three characters that are not allowed in filenames
8. Give me three good reasons why everyone should learn to use EDLIN. I am not joking. The elitists Edlin-Pooh-Poohers are down the garden with the fairies. They think everyone would want to use their favourite editor. They also think everyone would want to write megabytes of code when in fact most people write batch files of less than 20 lines Edlin is great for beginners. 

If you cant use it at all then you should do the Starting course. If you want to use it better then do the Using DOS course. 

9. For no level of knowledge in particular. 
        • Who can clearly state the difference between the Filespec and the Path. Lots of people confuse them. 

About now I can hear some readers muttering about "Where are the answers." . If I were a salesman I might say. "Come and do a course with Melb PC" I am not a salesman. So "Go and find out for yourself. If you don't want to go and find out, then you don't want to know." If you don't know how to find out then use your membership of Melb PC to contact one of our 4000+ members and ask them After all, this is what we are about. The biggest pool of computer knowhow in the Southern Hemisphere all incestuously picking each other's brains. We are the greatest.

10. I haven't finished yet. We were on about Path and Filespec before we were interrupted by those troublemakers looking for the answers. (Actually it was a commercial.)

  • Do you know what the PATH command does?
  • Do you know how to modify it and why?
    This rates a mention on the Starting Course and gets a hammering on the Using course.
  • How big is the smallest batchflle?
  • Do you KNOW how many sectors are allocated to a zero length file?
  • What happens when you copy a zero length file to a floppy disc and then what happens if the target is a hard disc?
  • What would be the effect of
    Copy *.* dos

    copy Horse.doc+Bang.doc=Smile

Now that = sign might be a curly one but all the rest are Starting level questions
11.
 Type README.1ST > PRN 
Copy README.1ST PRN 

What do you know about those. Individually they are Starting level. Collectively they are insignificant.

12. At startup time all sorts of files and things get loaded into memory and/or executed or just read. If you can sort these into the right order you are beyond a Starting course

Config.sys
Command.com
Dos.sys
Io.sys
Boot sector		 BIOS routines
Autoexec.bat
FAT
Directory Area

If you know what they all do you are beyond a Using course. Computing is full of jargon. Define or compare the following teens, all of which rate a mention to some extent on a Starting course.

Graphics mode
Parallel
XT
80386
High Density		 vs
vs
vs
vs
vs		 Text mode
Serial
AT
80387
Double Density

Much of the above is general knowledge and reflects Computer Literacy which is what a Starting Computing course is really about. The finer points and the technicalities don t really get much of a mention even on a Using DOS course. 

I guess you just mix with other computer users and it just soaks in by osmosis. You learn more about computing that way than any other.

Reprinted from the April 1991 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

 

[About Melbourne PC User Group]