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OK now, let's get one thing straight this is the Best Dos Page on the
internet! and I'm not the author.
Continued adaptation with full permission of the author, Claudio Colitti.
This page may be copied, mirrored or re-posted on any site providing
unrestricted free access to the page.
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Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Thai. |
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If you are making this course in a very
young class-room, you cannot use a normal GUI or a normal File Manager.
But there is a good, easily configurable solution, that also prevent any
use of other software (or illegal and dangerous operations on the Pc):
Power Menu 1.0b.
Jem E. Berkes
pwrmenu.exe 2.85 KB |
http://www.pc-tools.net/dos/freeware If you want to surf in the palmtop world, try this fine site: http://www.palmtop.net/super6.html |
With the right brick it's a child's
play:
| principal programs
pwrmenu.exe 2.85 KB pwrmenu.ini 1.07 KB pwrmenu.txt 7.46 KB file_id.diz 219 Bytes |
If you make a childly OS, use a particular Editor
for young children. If I found one freeware I'll put here with the link.
Teachers also will be interested to disable the
Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence to preserve young children from this keyboard mistake.
This is possible using this brick in autoexec.bat:
| Jeff Prosise and Dale Lewallen antiboot.com 83 Bytes |
http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/pub/ibm/MegaROM2/UTILITY/SYSTEM/antiboot.zip |
A good educational animation for young children is
this brick:
| Jan Bobrowski zuk.com 13.8 KB |
http://wizard.ae.krakow.pl/~jb/Zuk/ |
This is a wonderful, real time, full colored fractal brick for slow computers. When you use it in a lesson with your young children, you do the right thing. Enjoy.
The smallest DOS fractal brick is this Mandelbrot
generator:
| Michael J. Taylor fractal.exe 1.25 KB |
http://freespace.virgin.net/graham.taylor5 |
But it is not in real time. However, look at the size!
Please: use a fractal brick in your course, because it is propaedeutic for the following lessons. Infact a universe can be described only with fractals, chaos theory and minima surfaces.
Propaedeutic for the lessons on how to program a
universe in real time, I council you this little miracle:
|
Tim Clarke
Mars.exe 5.51 KB |
http:/ www.programmersheaven.com/zone10/cat342/15222.htm |
Look at the size of this real time landscape and
think to the newest "G-games" (where G is for GigaBytes...) If you can, try it
on very, very slow computers.
This council may be used in a kindergarten too!
If you need to turn on the computer
to pass the time with colours and animations when children are engaged in other
things like paint or sculpture (or sleep, if the school permit this), you can
use these 4 bricks:
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unknown
orbis.com 4.50 KB |
ftp://ftp.ua.pt/pub/simtelnet/msdos/graphics/orbis.zip |
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unknown
wow.com 7.59 KB |
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Judson D. McClendon
kaleids.exe 24.8 KB |
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Ty Halderman
hypno.exe 25.7 KB |
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Orbis is a wow version without some effects
(sometimes I prefer wow, sometimes I prefer orbis). Kaleids is nice. Hypno is
too much formal for young children. If you want I'll add other bricks like
these. E-mail me to add a program you know or to ask me if I know other
programs.
NICE GAMES
In the DR-DOS directory (if you use it) there is a
brick called Netwars.exe (76.8 KB). It is a 3D space game. Very nice for that
size, but it may give disgust if played in the long run.
If you search static games for your children, try these two
"classic" games:
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Don Cross
chenard.exe 71.8 KB |
http://www.intersrv.com/~dcross/chenard.html |
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Lyle Conn and Don Cross
swello.exe 58.0 KB |
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Your floppy will thank you. Your children may be not, because these two games are very hard to beat. When you choose the "thinking time" of the computer, choose a time of 1 or 2 seconds... It's better.
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For example, do you know what is the size of
a calculation program after the exit of the 386 processor with the 387
mathematic coprocessor???
|
Craig Hessel
calc387.com 1024 Bytes |
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Yes, exactly 1024 Bytes (1.00 KB)...
Use it in class-room for a day or two only to
play with it (with some math problems of the teacher, of course).
FOR CHILDREN THAT ARE ABLE TO PROGRAM A BATCH FILE
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A. Barthazi
icoview2.com 100 Bytes |
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This is an icon viewer. With this brick you can
program, for example, an easy batch card game using text for messages and
calling an icon card with it if you need to show a thing.
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Text is: "You find an Elf.", and after a
pause appear the elf icon.
1) Give money
You can use the 67 Bytes ask.com to give the
choices at the echo menu. If you choice 2 then the message may be: "Elf is
a powerful enemy. You lose!", and then the batch program calls (with
icoview2) the skull icon or the tombstone icon.
Think this: these may be the bricks used to show in an electronic watch or in a palmphone some images of a menu (like a DOS batch card game) in a little screen. Children can learn how is the real size of these programs: so, after, when they learn how to program, they know well how to do... If you win the game, you can use a DOS
animation. I council you this very big size brick because you can use it
also like screen saver!!!
If you want to use very little animations,
you can use the bricks of this fine site:
http://www.opferman.com. Enjoy. |
If you want to use a very little graphic viewer I
council you this little miracle:
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Stefan Peichl
Lxpic.com 15.7 KB |
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I think this is the best littlest DOS graphic viewer in the world: it can show BMP, PCX, ICN, JPG, JPE, GIF of any kind with some important functions like zoom and scroll, thumbnails, etc. It is not able to show old icons (ICO). So, add a icon viewer if you use old icons too.
Remember: if your children or your school make a program with freeware bricks, the program must to be absolutely freeware, or many authors may ask you to cancel the program or worse. And finally, think to the poor of this planet: if schools make shareware or commercial programs the only thing they make is to enlarge the poverty of the world. So poor children and poor schools in the world will not be able to use any kind of brick for the study.
FOR VERY EXPERT CHILDREN
| Jos, Campione and C. Robert Parkinson
pp12.com 9.43 KB |
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I think the size of this program is very big (strings.com includes peek-poke commands - you can find strings.com below). However, with this brick you can have the access at every memory location of the computer. So you can make yourselves the screens you need for the card game (or a more complex game), and to add some easy animations too.
FUN, PLEASE: I wrote things like "only by very expert children" or "only by children that are able to program batch files"... But I must remember you that these lessons are for an old computer without hard disk. So you can do anything you want. Destroy all the computer if you are able! Cancel all the memory!! After this, reboot your computer with your floppy (or another floppy if you have destroyed it...) and all will return in its place.
Remember: usually children are very clever to find easily the BIOS memory... For this I council you only old computers with the lowest possible cost (< 10 or 20 $). So you can use it changing it frequently in your class-room and children are happy to be free :-)
Naturally, children and schools are riches and
poor. I apologize for this council to all the teachers in the poor parts of the
world. Of course, I know that your old computer have an inestimable value, and
cannot be "destroyed" for a game.
HOW TO REDUCE DOS SIZE
It is possible to reduce DOS size replacing
Microsoft DOS external commands with batch files. I wrote before about the
choice/ask example. Now I teach you an easy way to reduce the size of
around all DOS external commands.
Because using destructive commands (like
move) as example for the children is not a good idea, I changed the
example using a not destructive command like tree.com.
Infact tree is the best command to use for
a school work because you only read files (and because you only give to
read to the children some dir parameters).
tree.bat:
dir %1 /s/ad/b/on
So you can tell to the children: good job!
 MICROSOFT MS-DOS tree.com 6.87 KB |
YOU tree.bat 17 Bytes (this example don't work on DR-DOS) |
After this you advice your children to not
try to write destructive commands, but only to use freeware web resources
written by professionals.
DOS LANGUAGE IS ONLY A CURIOSITY
Microsoft DOS language is very poor. You will find
the 30 internal commands of MS-DOS 6.22 in lesson 5. You can program in "DOS"
only using batch utilities, that means a collection of little commands to use in
a batch program (rarely as alone). A batch utility contains the adding words for
the "DOS" language.
You will find all you need in this fine website:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/1401/batch02.htm.
I council you only a brick from all the batch utilities world:
| Douglas Boling strings.com 13.6 KB |
http://members.cox.net/dos/batch01.htm |
It is very small and full of commands (over 70 commands, and 4 KB of the program are dedicated to the help messages!!!). I saw an instability in a 486 used to test it, but I think it is not important.
However, this "DOS" language is out of the range
of this course.
Young children only need
how to use these bricks, not how to make these bricks...
Rest is only examples and curiosities (like
tree.bat).
Batch language is important
only when you finish this "assemble" phase and you start to teach (or learn) the
programmation (with other programmation languages).
NOTE FOR THE PROGRAMMERS: IF YOU WANT TO REWRITE THE ENTIRE DOS EXTERNAL COMMANDS IN BATCH FILES FOR THE SCHOOLS, BE CAREFUL! IF THIS PROGRAMMING IS TOO DIFFICULT TO READ IT MAY BECAME USELESS FOR CHILDREN...
WARNING: a batch file is read from the floppy. It
is not loaded in memory like .com or .exe files. So, if you need to change the
floppy to load something from another floppy, batch works is interrupted. If you
want to make batch files independent from the floppy, load all of them in
ramdisk. In this way you are also in an interesting situation: batch files are
slow because they are read from the slowest floppy or the hard disk. But in the
more fast ramdisk memory they arrive near to the .com or .exe speed, without the
needs to compile them... It is a programming trick...
If you want to know more about batch files I
council you this fine site where you will find all you need to start and more:
http://home7.inet.tele.dk/batfiles//index.htm.
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WHY DOS?
When I was student I was not so good at English (today I get worse...). A day I confused 'orrible' with 'awful' and I made 'orriful'...
Well. DOS is a true 'orriful' operating system, because DOS designers confused 'demential' with 'operating system' and they made 'DOS'.
It is limited in its functions
only to 640 KB. And it has many, many other problems.
So, why DOS? The answer is:
BRICKS!
New operating systems have few freeware bricks. Only DOS has MANY, MANY THOUSANDS OF FREEWARE BRICKS. If you search a brick, a freeware brick, usually you find it in the DOS world. You will have more problems to find it in Linux world, or in BeOS world, or in JOS world, or in another operating system world (Windows apart, but Windows is not freeware). And because DOS is compatible with Windows (DOS programs can run under Win95, Win98, etcetera). MuLinux for example is not compatible with Windows.
It is easy to tell me "DOS is old, DOS is dead", but when you make projects for children you need bricks, not words.And DOS is an ocean of bricks. Freeware bricks. OK FOR THE DIGITAL DIVIDE PROBLEM.
Because this course may be used also in riches schools I encourage teachers of these riches schools to do this course FOR FUN with their children. But if you are so "material", I encourage you to study these sites as example of the actuality of this approach:
1)
http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/~shri/iPic.html
(more other links inside)
2)
http://java.sun.com/products/javacard
3)
http://www.google.com/search?q=embedded+computers&btnG=Go
(over 300.000 links)
I think children have a future
playing with freeware DOS bricks and learning that bricks can be very little.
VERY GOOD FOR THEIR "EMBEDDED" FUTURE.
It is not important what
is the operating system or the language used because they change every
year... (if you don't believe in this assertion, try to read this
webpage...
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/misc/lang-list.txt).
It is important only the message: Hey! Look here!! These bricks do these things
with these size!!!
So they will became more
intelligent than the adults at their consumers' associations, that think
that an operating system less of 1 or 2 GB is impossible, or in other words,
that think that an operating system of 1 or 2 GB is a "normal thing" and so
they do nothing to protect us (the consumers...).
Yes. I think children will
have a future. But only with fun, please.
WHY THE USE OF THE FLOPPY?
DIGITAL DIVIDE: a floppy may be the only didactical thing a poor child can use to study informatic where he or she lives. The floppy is very cheap and can be reused (an used pencil or an used exercise-book, not).
The floppy is, today,
out-of-date. But it still is a very good didactic resource because CD or other
supports are actually very expensive (included their
drives)...
Its
size, 1.44 MB (even if you can arrive over 1.72 MB), is perfect for the work of
the children. When the child arrive at the end of the size of the floppy the
homework or the class-work is finished.
WHY TO MAKE A BOOTABLE FLOPPY DISK USING WINDOWS 95?
I used Windows 95 in the Italian
lessons because it is easy to use and because the third world uses Windows too
(even if I don't know if those Windows are registered or downloaded with the
sharing in Internet of the hard disks, or simply CD copies).
Windows 95 is capable to be
installed in a 386 without the mathematical coprocessor, with 4 MB RAM only, in
an hard disk <100 MB (Internet Explorer 2 or 3 included).
So, I think this is the only
Windows that the poor in the world (about 5 billions...) can use to obtain the
best satisfaction from the Windows software world (WIN 3.x is incompatible with
most of those software).
With Windows 95 I also solved these problems:
1) to avoid QBasic. In MS-DOS the editor is inside another program called QBasic, that is the oldest version of QuickBasic. When you call Edit, you call QBasic. To teach QBasic and the Basic programming is out of this course.
2) to reduct the cost of the course with Microsoft resources. Inside Windows 95 you have a reduced version of MS-DOS. So you don't buy two operating system, but only one.
Of course you can use all the
operating systems to make a bootable DOS floppy, DOS
included!!!
WHY NOT WINDOWS 98 (TO MAKE THE DOS BOOTABLE FLOPPY)?
Use it if you want.
WHY NOT LINUX (TO MAKE THE DOS BOOTABLE FLOPPY)?
This is the site of Mulinux (a
Linux in one floppy disk!):
http://sunsite.dk/mulinux.
i PUBBLICIZE THE WORK OF ANOTHER iTALIAN. i KNOW. iT'S BAD, BAD, BAD...
Try to install it. If you are able to solve all the installation questions,
you come from another planet. Apart this fun joke, Linux (all the versions)
is not good for the children. It may become very difficult, sometimes.
So, even if you know how to
use the DOS emulator or some Windows emulators, their use is out of this
course.
WHY IN THIS SITE THERE IS NO PROGRAM TO DOWNLOAD?
In this site you can find a
collection of my courses for the schools. Because I've not the time to follow
the upgrades of all the softwares (even if I test some of they periodically), I
council you pages of professionals that have the time to follow
they.
WHY QNX PROGRAMMERS ARE PROFESSIONALS IF WE CAN DO IT BETTER THAN THEY?
Ahem... They do it in exactly
1.44 MB... We need, after having unzipped all the files, over 8 MB
;-)
However,
if you follow the councils in this page you'll be able to fill the floppy with
interesting things, and to tell to your "guided" children: good job! :-) :-) :-)
:-) :-)
WHY YOU DON'T USE A SOUND CARD IN THIS COURSE?
This is not true. It is
impossible to add a sound driver in DOS because new soundcards have not a DOS
driver, old soundcards have DOS drivers incompatibles among them, and of course
you can have a wrong hardware configuration. So I use the speaker, because it is
an universal standard of all the Pc, and the CD drive sound exit, because it is
an universal standard too. It's like to have a sound card...
more FAQ later...
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Your e-mails will be used to
motivate me to continue this EDU project.
I do it for nothing.
But if you are a person that would pay to me a million of dollars or
two for my absolutely freeware project, I don't know... only to associate
your name to the project... feel free to send me the money!
I'll use the money to eat and for some humanitarian projects I've in
mind.
If your school uses
this teaching equipment, please send me an e-mail. Thank you.
But most important is your floppy configurations for the creation of
a little collection in this site.
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www.dotforce.org |
AGAINST DIGITAL DIVIDE
Some authors have written a message for the readers of this webpage. Colitti Claudio - J.R.Ferguson - |
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PHOTO:
IMAGES:
screen.gif : with permission of
http://www.dotforce.org
vincent4.gif : VincentCyprien (freeware use only)
13.gif / 38.gif / 42.gif :
http://members.xoom.it/32x32icons/index.htm.
b06.gif / p283.gif:
http://www.hoxie.org/.
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