Dos trivia

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!

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nix

format /f:720

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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...

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

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PC Solutions

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!

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

Oh and Grey is better then Nothing:eek:

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!

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

http://www.petesqbsite.com/

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))

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

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 :)

:D :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dude111

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

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

dir /p

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dude111

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

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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

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)

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.