Dos trivia

[PC Solutions]

The DOS forum appears to be dead. I love DOS!
In the begging there was the command line.

Therefore, I am going to ask a trivia question to see how many people really know and respond!

What is the correct syntax to format a low density 720k floppy disk on a 1.44 floppy drive in DOS?

Which version of DOS is your pick.
Anywhere from 4.01 up is fine.

If you know the answer, then your hair is turning grey!

[Nix]

format /f:720

I'm using XP at work and went Start > Run > cmd > enter

Then typed format /? at the prompt and looked at the switches and worked it out.

I'd probably use 6.22 or what ever the default is that came with Win98SE.

And no grey hairs yet.

[Platypus]

format /f:720

I think you might get a missing parameter error on that one, Nix?

Maybe format a: /f:720

DOS 5.0 was great for me after sticking with 3.3 because 4 was a fat slug. But 6.2x was the standard probably.

And I'll admit to a little grey...

[Nix]

I guess I was making an assumption of already being at a:\> but yes including the a: makes it a little more failsafe.

[SpywareDr]

Or, with MS-DOS 6.22 you could use:

format a: /t:80 /n:9 /c

80 tracks x 9 sectors per track x 512 sectors per track x 2 sides = 737,280 bytes / 1,024 bytes per Kilobyte = 720K

The "/c" switch forces it to retest bad clusters.

[Steve R Jones]

Which version of DOS is your pick.
Anywhere from 4.01 up is fine.

If you know the answer, then your hair is turning grey!

I remember DOS 4.0 was basically "recalled" it had so many problems....

Oh and Grey is better then Nothing

[PC Solutions]

The /t:80 /n:9 switches worked with any version of DOS.
If I recall correctly the /f:720 switch was introduced with DOS 6.
I was actually asked this question in a job interview once.

How many of you have any 720k disks still sitting around?

Remember EDLIN before DOS Edit?
That was a thorny beast wasnt it?

I still use DEBUG every once in a while.

DOS is not dead!

[greengoose1]

No it isn't. And don't forget Q Basic.

http://www.petesqbsite.com/

[Dude111]

I only knew 1 of the questions (Which dos is your pick)

Mine is the one that comes with 98se (6.22)

Is Dos 6.22 THE HIGHEST DOS VERSION that will work on 98se? (One thing i dont like about 6.22 is YOU CANT SEE STUFF ONCE IT SCROLLS OFF THE WINDOW! (No scrollbar on the right))

[Train]

Why you used the /p switch. p as in page.

[Dude111]

Ahhhhhh i forgot about that command (Didnt remember if it was .p or ,p)

It doesnt seem to work with some things i see now (Says error parsing)


Thank you Train

[Train]

[SpywareDr]

Ahhhhhh i forgot about that command (Didnt remember if it was .p or ,p)

It's neither. It's a '/' (forward-slash) and then a 'p'. For example:

dir /p

It doesnt seem to work with some things i see now (Says error parsing

Not all commands use the "/p" parameter, like the "type" command. You can try running those commands through the more filter though so that they pause every screenful.

No filter: type somefilename.txt

More filter: type somefilename.txt|more

[Dude111]

Yes dir/p works but when listing some other things from dos that command DOES NOT WORK (Says Error Parsing command ) (Must not work with 3rd party apps JUST DOS ITSELF)

[Train]

dir | more

Allows you to view the directory listing one page at a time, if applicable. This would be the same as doing dir /p.

more myfile.txt

Would display the contents of a page one page at a time. Pressing space would go to the next page and pressing enter would go down one line at a time.

And it works in win 7.