DOS is a Disk Operating System, that means it's an OS that uses a disk. Operating systems for IBM PCs since the early 1980s were called DOS. DOS consists of the command prompt, mostly command.com and two kernelfiles. That's a basic DOS system. DOS was a mainstream OS until Windows 95 (which also uses DOS, btw) threw it off the market.

Well, firstly we are developing a Windows user interface. This will be Win-32, i.e. it will run under Windows 95 and Windows NT. But since the compiler is a non-graphical application, and the DOS interface runs quite happily under all flavours of Windows already, it has not been as high a priority as making sure that the basic functionality is top-notch. In other words, we believe an excellent compiler with a DOS front-end is better than an average compiler with a Windows front end.

Short for Denial of Service attack, a type of attack on a network that is designed to bring the network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DoS attacks, such as the Ping of Death and Teardrop attacks, exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. For all known DoS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused by the attacks. But, like viruses, new DoS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by hackers.

First, you need a computer which is IBM compatible. The computer should have 640 KB of RAM or even more :)) (in some cases it will work with fewer RAM, too, but I would use more). Then, you need a floppy drive, a harddisk or something simular. It would be great to have a keyboard or a mouse and if you want to see something you might need a monitor... but that's all. For those who always were happy with Windows it might be annoying to type a lot at the command prompt.

If you don't have a clue about DOS, I advise you to read some sites with the DOS basics, e.g. http://www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm.

First of all, you need a DOS compatible modem or ISDN card. I advise to use the Arachne browser, a great DOS webbrowser with PacketDriver and dialer. It's not difficult to set it up.

A list of good DOS websites can be found at the DOSNET netring: http://www.ringsurf.com/netring?ring=dosnet;action=list.

If you like DOS and want to discuss your problems or the experiences you made, then sign up to the OpenDOS mailing list at mailto:opendos@delorie.com (to subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@delorie.com with the text add opendos or add opendos-digest in the body. If you subscribe to opendos-digest, you'll get all e-mails every sunday in a digest form). If you can program, make a few free programs for the FreeDOS project or help people with their problems.

Sure, it is. You need a program like taskmgr.exe in DR-DOS 7.03, but a tool like that clutters your memory like nothing else... Another very good and well-known tool is DesqView, look at http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html and you will know much more about it.

Yes, there is. Lineo sells licenses in big packages, but if you only want to buy a single license you can get it at http://www.blands.co.uk, at Caldera (only version 7.02) or - if you live in or near Germany you can purchase it at http://www.linuxland.de.

I found an outdated (March 14, 1997) OpenDOS FAQ at http://www.delorie.com/opendos/faq/. If you know any other DR-DOS/OpenDOS FAQ, please contact me <cfuchs@n-net.org>. PTS DOS is a russian DOS, written in assembler. It's really fast. It comes on two floppy disks, one with the system and the utilities, the other one with Arachne as webbrowser. It claims to be MS-DOS compatible, but it's a bit strange in configuration and memory management but it is still developed. At http://phystechsoft.

Yes, users have reported success with DOS-based Quicken through version 8 (most recent DOS Quicken version). Recent versions may require more memory than is available under the system manager, but it's easy enough to exit the system manager and run Quicken directly from the DOS prompt, or run it in a separate Software Carousel work area. The "disable filer" trick may allow you to squeeze even the latest Quicken in under the system manager.

DOS was the original platform built by Microsoft. Unlike Windows, there was no user interface as you see now, it was all command line driven (with the exception of the built in editor/debugger). DOS Mode is basically DOS inside Windows itself, though the DOS you run inside Windows is not capable of nearly half the things you can do in "real DOS" (i.e. outside Windows).

Inappropriate language in your Username or Profile Personal contact information such as telephone, email or contact address Where the photo is a cartoon, illustration, animal, scenery or object of anything other than yourself. This photo needs to be a picture of you aged 18+, we do not allow photos of minors

You just need to copy a himem.sys from a Windows 9x/ME system to your DOS system and load it before your emm386 (e.g.: add DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\HIMEM.SYS

Florian Xaver postet a list of intersting DOS network links to the FreeDOS mailing list: http://www.freedos.org/freedos/news/technote/157.html. Thanks a lot!

Sure, you can. Create a primary partiton BEFORE your Windows partition (e.g. with PartitionMagic) and get a boot manager (I use the german tool 'Bootmanager', you can get a free trial version at http://www.bootmanager-pro.de).