On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 6:16 PM Adam Nielsen via Freedos-user
<[email protected]> wrote:
>[..]
> As to the original question, while I only use DOS for nostalgia
> reasons, I think it makes an excellent teaching tool for learning how
> modern computers work. It's especially useful for people who wish to
> run Windows, as many conventions that started with DOS (such as drive
> letters) are still used today. But DOS exposes everything at a much
> lower level so it makes it easier for a beginner to get a feeling for
> how the machine is affected by what they do. Even modern Windows is
> having a bit of a resurgence when it comes to the command line, so all
> the skills DOS users learned with command line programs are even more
> relevant today in the world of Windows than they ever have been before.
>
I agree! DOS is a very simple operating system without a lot of moving
parts. It makes a great platform to talk about "how computers work"
because everything is so direct: after the computer starts up and
completes the POST, the bootloader launches the operating system. The
FreeDOS kernel reads FDCONFIG.SYS (or CONFIG.SYS, if FDCONFIG.SYS is
not there) for settings. Somewhere in FDCONFIG.SYS is a SHELL= line
that tells FreeDOS how to launch the Command shell (or uses a default
if not there). And the Command shell reads AUTOEXEC.BAT for its
initialization before presenting an interactive prompt.
That's a very simple process without a lot of moving parts. And fairly
easy to explain:
1. POST
2. Kernel
3. Kernel reads its settings
4. Kernel launches Command shell
5. Command shell reads its settings
6. C:\> prompt
I teach a Management Information Systems ("MIS") class, and I use this
when we learn how computers work. Once the students understand the
basics with DOS, it's pretty easy to translate that to more modern
operating systems like Linux or Windows.
Jim
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