 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A Beginner's Tale: Part 5 Ron Wilby |
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Last month the Beginner's Tale got away from me completely. There I was, punching keys at midnight, piling up material in chunks too large for Major to publish. A halt was called and so some of the DOS commands I planned to discuss in our last episode had to be held over till this month.
Let's deal with the leftovers first. By the way, please note that you don't have to memorise all these commands, but you do need to know of their existence so you can use them as required.
XCOPY
In my early days I didn't know about XCOPY, but I have since discovered it offers many advantages over COPY. For a start, it works at up to twice the speed of COPY, it can copy whole directory trees (we'll talk about those later), and it can be made to copy only those files that have been updated since the last XCOPY. There is much less disk-swapping since XCOPY works by reading as many files as possible into memory before it starts dumping them onto the target disk. If, for example, you want to take home all the files in a particular directory of your hard disk, use XCOPY.
You will need to add some 'switches' to XCOPY, so you might type XCOPY/V where the '/V' part is known as a 'switch'. This particular switch verifies the copy being made. So, if you type COPY/V r XCOPY/V, DOS will check the copy for accuracy and correct any errors.
There is, of course, a trade-off: adding /V slows the copy process. An alternative is to use the COMP command to ensure an accurate copy. Refer to your DOS Manual for the available switches and how to use them.
Some Additional Commands
In no particular order, here are some more of the commands I have found almost essential during the tame covered by the Beginner's Tale.
CLS stands for 'clear screen' and leaves the cursor in the top-left corner.
CHKDSK 'Checkdisk' examines the default drive or directory files and reports on total and unused disk space, total and unused memory, and bad sectors, if any. 'CHKDSK *.*' reports on fragmented files. There is a switch, /F, that is supposed to fix errors. Don't use it! If in trouble, and a beginner, you need help from someone with experience.
ATTRIB \: is short for 'attribute', which is a 'Flag', or marker, that can be set on any file. There are four types of attribute settings. The 'a' flag is used by DOS to decide which files are new or altered, and is used by some backup programs. The 'r' flag is used to make a file 'read only', i.e. it cannot be altered or deleted. There is an 's' flag for system files, and an 'h' flag for hidden files. More about those later.
You can use the ATTRIB command to make a file read-only, which provides protection against accidents and against viruses. Very useful if you have children using your computer (a better idea is to buy them an old XT). I have all my really important files set to read only. Type ATTRIB +r (filename), or you can use ATTRIB *.* to make a whole directory read only. Type ATTRIB (filename) to see all file attributes.
DEL & ERASE: these have the same meaning. DEL (filename) deletes the file. DEL *.* deletes all files. If you make a mistake and delete something you needed to keep, be aware that only DOS version 5.0 has an Undelete command, although a helpful friend with Norton may be enough. PC Tools will fix your problem, but what you need is help.
Don't panic, don't touch anything, don t even switch off the power until you have phoned someone.
DIR lists all the files in a directory or on a floppy disk, giving size and date and time the file was last worked on. This is the first command you use on an unknown disk. There are switches; '/P' and '/E'; try them and see what happens. I personally use a little utility file called DDIR4 which I much prefer to the DIR command. DOS 5.0, however, has a much-improved DIR command. Have a look at your Manual if you are a bit more advanced than the New Starter stage, otherwise yell for help, and don't forget that pressing Fl gives you help about DOS.
LABEL gives a disk a 'Volume Label' (name tag) of up to eleven characters. Type LABEL A:
REN is short for 'rename' and changes the name of a file. Type REN (Filespec) Filename.
SYS transfers System (boot-up) files to a disk, which must have an empty directory or must have been formatted to allow room for the system files, the position of which is important - if they are not on the right tracks and in their proper sectors DOS will return an error message, "Non-system disk ... ".
Well, those are approximately the commands I had to know about in my New-Starter days, before I had a hard disk. There are of course many more, but you don't need to 'learnt them, you just look them up in the Manual, paperback book, or whatever as needed.
And in the Beginning ...
Now that Ron has reached the lofty heights of owning a working XT and a book on DOS, what next?
For me, that was the time to start making contact with the world of computing out there. I decided to subscribe to one or more monthly magazines and to join Melbourne PC User Group. Picking a magazine or two is not too easy. Most of those on the newsagents stands are of overseas origin and are of little use to the small-budget user who, I hope, is reading this series. Of the local products many are aimed at up-market users with big budgets. Try to find something aimed at Australian market users.
There is no decision involved in joining Melbourne PC User Group, you are reading our magazine and it is essential you join. As a member you should attend as many SIGs (special interest groups) as you can. You will learn a great deal very quickly and you will make some good friends with whom you can exchange useful information.
Applications Software
At this stage I dearly wanted to 'do something' with this computer, now dominating the 'office' (spare bedroom). The original motivation was a wife who wanted to write (short stories, creative writing etc.), and thus I was told a 'Word Processor', whatever that may be, was the next requirement.
At that time, standard software for a respectable PC was:
By courtesy of ex-colleagues I found myself in possession of two 360 kB floppies, my entire software library, and with no idea what function or functions any of the programs could possibly carry out. Perhaps you New Starters need some help here too.
What is a Word Processor?
There are very satisfactory dedicated word processor machines (they are not computers in the ordinary sense of the term) on the market for those who need nothing more. I am assuming that you readers are going to use your computer for many different things and, therefore, you will buy a word processor software package as part of your final set-up.
Many 'levels' of word processors are available in commercial software, from quite basic programs to 'high end' products that do everything except cook your breakfast. Also, a search through Melb
PC's shareware library may give you what you need at lower cost. Because of the great variety of users needs and of software to meet them, this series will not attempt to 'choose' your applications programs for you, but I'll try to give a brief description of what each of the main categories of program will do.
A word processor is for composing, writing, editing, and polishing text which may then be formatted and printed in a way suitable for whatever purpose. It is the modern office version of a typewriter, but performs functions way beyond a the capacities of a typewriter as to lead you into a whole new world. You are given a blank screen on which to 'open a document file'. Type whatever you wish any way at all and you can save it to disk and print it There are menus and help screens when you need them and some other features worth mentioning.
ERRORS if you make a 'typo', just overwrite it (on screen), save the revised version of your document, and the error is gone for ever. No white paint, no error correction paper, no retyping pages.
WORDWRAP: at the end of each line the word processor 'wraps' the text round to the next line. No need for you to type a carriage return, it's all taken care of, and if you decide to add an extra few words, just type it in and the words already there will 'move up' to make room.
BLOCK OPERATIONS: whole blocks of text you have typed can be marked and moved around your document, and you can even save them for use in another document altogether. Also you can delete (and undelete) blocks or move them to another position in the text.
FORMAT margins and tabs can be set along with paragraph indenting. You can have right justification (straight right edge) to your text either turned on or off, page numbers automatically printed, and lines of text centred.
PRINTERS: with most printers a variety of enhancements are available, such as italics, boldface, underline, subscript, and superscript. Character sizes and line height and spacing are under your control. There is much much more to a good word processor than I have been able to cover here, but space is limited.
WordStar
Well, it turned out the first of the two floppies I mentioned earlier purported to contain
WordStar, a hoary old version 3, I remember, which had been released about seven years earlier. Of course, with no manual, progress was infinitely slow, with many many phone calls to the ex-colleagues. So, into the bookshops again, and back home with another paperback called
WordStar Tips and Techniques.
Alas, I now discovered that my single WordStar floppy contained but the bare bones. All the nice features like Spelling Checker, Thesaurus, and MailMerge were missing. Time to take the hint and go out and buy the program. I thus came into possession of
WordStar 4.0, a better paperback book, and some idea of what I was taking on.
At that stage I went off for a two-week holiday at Apollo Bay, without computer but with paperback book
(QUE's Using WordStar by Steve Ditlea), which was 500 pages of clear concise learnable information. I soaked it
up.
My First Hard Disk
Readers of earlier episodes of The Tale may remember I was using a two-floppy-disk computer (with 640 kB of memory, thought to be hot stuff back then. Many machines were sold with 256 k8 only). Suddenly I was confronted by a program which occupied
six 360 kB floppies. My normal procedure up to this time had been to use the A: drive for the program disk and the B: drive for the output (data, text, whatever). How can you then run this six-floppy
WordStar? Two weeks at the beach with paperback revealed this could (just) be done, but was going to involve an awful lot of floppy-swapping and would be very slow.
The awful truth loomed! A hard disk had become a necessity for WordStar, and probably for other applications programs, such as
Lotus 1-2-3. So back to my original supplier and quote of $600.00 for a fairly slow 20
MB hard disk, which was duly installed very soon after my return from holiday.
Oh joy, Oh joy, the speed and convenience of having the whole of WordStar at ones fingertips with all its bells and whistles. It was all new and exciting for me. But the excitement brought with it some dangers. I had to learn all about directories and partitions. I had to learn how easy it is to use the Format command to destroy the contents of your hard disk. And virus infection, hitherto something which happened to other people, became a real threat to me because I owned a hard disk (they were not very common in those days).
So, next month we'll talk about hard disks, directories, and other associated things I learned way back when. Till next month.
Reprinted from the April 1993 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
