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In computer data storage, drive letter assignment is the process of assigning alphabetical identifiers to volumes. Unlike the concept of UNIX mount points, where volumes are named and located arbitrarily in a single hierarchical namespace, drive letter assignment allows multiple highest-level namespaces. Drive letter assignment is thus a process of using letters to name the roots of the "forest" representing the file system; each volume holds an independent "tree".
DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS.
COMMAND.COM is the default command-line interpreter for MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. In the case of DOS, it is the default user interface as well. It has an additional role as the usual first program run after boot, hence being responsible for setting up the system by running the AUTOEXEC.BAT configuration file, and being the ancestor of all processes.
In computing, the working directory of a process is a directory of a hierarchical file system, if any, dynamically associated with each process. It is sometimes called the current working directory (CWD), e.g. the BSD getcwd function, or just current directory. When the process refers to a file using a simple file name or relative path (as opposed to a file designated by a full path from a root directory), the reference is interpreted relative to the working directory of the process. So for example a process with working directory /rabbit-shoes that asks to create the file foo.txt will end up creating the file /rabbit-shoes/foo.txt.
VxD is the device driver model used in Microsoft Windows/386 2.x, the 386 enhanced mode of Windows 3.x, Windows 9x, and to some extent also by the Novell DOS 7, OpenDOS 7.01, and DR-DOS 7.02 multitasker (TASKMGR). VxDs have access to the memory of the kernel and all running processes, as well as raw access to the hardware. Starting with Windows 98, Windows Driver Model was the recommended driver model to write drivers for, with the VxD driver model still being supported for backward compatibility, until Windows Me.
In DOS memory management, conventional memory, also called base memory, is the first 640 kilobytes of the memory on IBM PC or compatible systems. It is the read-write memory directly addressable by the processor for use by the operating system and application programs. As memory prices rapidly declined, this design decision became a limitation in the use of large memory capacities until the introduction of operating systems and processors that made it irrelevant.
In DOS memory management, the high memory area (HMA) is the RAM area consisting of the first 65520 bytes above the one megabyte in an IBM AT or compatible computer.
CONFIG.SYS is the primary configuration file for the DOS and OS/2 operating systems. It is a special ASCII text file that contains user-accessible setup or configuration directives evaluated by the operating system's DOS BIOS during boot. CONFIG.SYS was introduced with DOS 2.0.
DOSKEY is a command for DOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS that adds command history, macro functionality, and improved editing features to the command-line interpreters COMMAND.COM and cmd.exe.
AUTOEXEC.BAT is a system file that was originally on DOS-type operating systems. It is a plain-text batch file in the root directory of the boot device. The name of the file is an abbreviation of "automatic execution", which describes its function in automatically executing commands on system startup; the filename was coined in response to the 8.3 filename limitations of the FAT file system family.
ANSI.SYS is a device driver in the DOS family of operating systems that provides extra console functions through ANSI escape sequences. It is partially based upon a subset of the text terminal control standard proposed by the ANSI X3L2 Technical Committee on Codes and Character Sets.
A File Control Block (FCB) is a file system structure in which the state of an open file is maintained. A FCB is managed by the operating system, but it resides in the memory of the program that uses the file, not in operating system memory. This allows a process to have as many files open at one time as it wants, provided it can spare enough memory for an FCB per file.
IBMBIO.COM is a system file in many DOS operating systems. It contains the system initialization code and all built-in device drivers. It also loads the DOS kernel (IBMDOS.COM) and optional pre-loadable system components, displays boot menus, processes configuration files and launches the shell.
Virtual DOS machines (VDM) refer to a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.
Long filename (LFN) support is Microsoft's backward-compatible extension of the 8.3 filename naming scheme used in DOS. Long filenames can be more descriptive, including longer filename extensions such as .jpeg, .tiff, .html, and .xhtml that are common on other operating systems, rather than specialized shortened names such as .jpg, .tif, .htm, or .xht. The standard has been common with File Allocation Table (FAT) filesystems since its first implementation in Windows NT 3.5 of 1994.
A disk compression software utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size. Unlike a file compression utility, which compresses only specified files—and which requires the user to designate the files to be compressed—an on-the-fly disk compression utility works automatically through resident software without the user needing to be aware of its existence. On-the-fly disk compression is therefore also known as transparent, real-time or online disk compression.
The line-oriented debugger DEBUG.EXE is an external command in operating systems such as DOS, OS/2 and Windows.
Computer hardware or software is said to be bug compatible if it exactly replicates even an undesirable feature of a previous version. The phrase is found in the Jargon File.
MSCDEX or Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions is a software program produced by Microsoft and included with MS-DOS 6.x and certain versions of Windows to provide CD-ROM support. Earlier versions of MSCDEX since 1986 were installable add-ons for MS-DOS 3.1 and higher.
DOS Protected Mode Services (DPMS) is a set of extended DOS memory management services to allow DPMS-enabled DOS drivers to load and execute in extended memory and protected mode.
References
- 1 2 "Overview of Memory-Management Functionality in MS-DOS". Microsoft. 2001-06-06. Q95555. Archived from the original on 2020-02-08. Retrieved 2020-02-08.
- ↑ Wolverton, Van (2003). Running MS-DOS Version 6.22. 20th Anniversary Edition (6th revised ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1812-7.
- ↑ Paul, Matthias R. (1997-07-30). NWDOS-TIPs — Tips & Tricks rund um Novell DOS 7, mit Blick auf undokumentierte Details, Bugs und Workarounds [Tips & tricks for Novell DOS 7, with a focus on undocumented details, bugs and workarounds]. MPDOSTIP (in German) (3 ed.). Archived from the original on 2016-11-05. Retrieved 2012-01-11. (NB. NWDOSTIP.TXT is a comprehensive work on Novell DOS 7 and OpenDOS 7.01, including the description of many undocumented features and internals. It is part of the author's yet larger MPDOSTIP.ZIP collection maintained up to 2001 and distributed on many sites at the time. The provided link points to a HTML-converted older version of the NWDOSTIP.TXT file.)
- 1 2 "Chapter 10 Managing Memory". Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 User Guide. Caldera, Inc. 1998 [1993, 1997]. Archived from the original on 2017-08-30. Retrieved 2017-08-30.
- ↑ "Loadhigh". Technet. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2019-08-13. Retrieved 2020-02-08.
Windows XP does not use this command. It is accepted only for compatibility with MS-DOS files.
- ↑ "MS-DOS subsystem commands". Microsoft.
- ↑ "Windows Commands". Microsoft. 2023-04-26.
