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HOW TO ASSEMBLE YOUR PERSONAL OPERATING SYSTEM IN A FLOPPY DISK Selected links to other sites: DOS Softwares Informatic Dictionary

The course on this page was made especially to assist missionary and humanitarian educational projects against digital divide in underpriveledged areas globally.

This page is linked in many fine sites like: http://www.docdos.de/, http://www.8ung.at/dos/drsupp.htm#otherhelp, http://www.drdos.net/links.htm, http://dosonly.net/links.htm, http://www.opendos.de/links.htm, http://Reset00.com. And of course in sites where I received the awards and in the principal search engines like Google.
 
 

LESSONS (HOW TO MAKE YOUR LESSONS)

The history of this course is a bit complex, but I'll try to simplify it. At the beginning (about July, 2000) I started writing 6 simple and easy computer programming lessons in Italian, my native language, for children. To make them more accessible to a wider audience I included an English 'Translation' button at the top of every page.

But soon after I also wrote this web site in English to assist English speaking teachers from all over the world in preparing better computer based courses for children.

I used Microsoft MS-DOS in the lessons due to the widespread availibility of this operating system. The majority of you have a version of MS-DOS somewhere in your home or office and so it is legal to build a floppy with MS-DOS inside.

Microsoft MS-DOS English lessons are on this page in note form here:

Because I later found that many persons do not have or that they are too poor to own a copy of Microsoft MS-DOS, I added the Freeware DOS English lessons you will find here:

Inside the notes you will find the locations of the files you need in your computer and the file locations (URL's) of files you need to download from the internet, and how to put them on your floppy diskettes. Solutions are marked with easy little floppies. These are the legends:
 

bad solution for a floppy

not so bad for a floppy

good solution for a floppy

THE LESSON PLANS

The Italian/English lessons are the reference points for this course: They are absolutely easy and they were designed for children who have only basic reading and writing skills. This is the reason that there are 6 lessons instead of just a brief table of programs to download from your hard disk or from the net. Explain to your children that you are going to do this in 6 easy steps instead of just telling them: download this, download that!

I give you now the English translations of the original Italian lessons for developing your own personal computer courses.
 

Lesson 0 (for teachers): lessons are in number of 6 for the assembly of the operating system IN A FLOPPY DISK, every lesson last about 30 minutes, it is better to teach only a lesson in a day (two lessons if you use more than 30 minutes), you can use a computer without hard disk and sound card, be careful due to the experiments because they can damage the Pc, Microsoft products must be paid, Freeware products not, Shareware occasionally may became Freeware for schools, however teachers must read terms and conditions of every software before to use it (this thing can take a lot of time, as the time of a long lesson).

Lesson 1: how to make a bootable floppy disk using a commercial Microsoft DOS, or a freeware (for not commercial uses too) DOS. For example:
 

Usually other files are presents after the boot operation. Delete them. We'll use only these three for all the lessons.

Lesson 2: to add Win95 Edit or a not Microsoft DOS editor in the bootable floppy and to play with it writing, saving and printing letters.txt to your friends.

Lesson 3: to make bootable Edit (or the other editor) writing a particular letter called autoexec.bat. This letter is not for your friends. It is read by the computer.

autoexec.bat
a:\edit.com

This lesson can be very "small", but children are still engaged with the use of the combinations of the keyboard keys of the Editor.

Lesson 4: what is a driver and to add some drivers (mouse driver, virtual hard disk driver).

Lesson 5: how to load the operating system into the virtual hard disk. Pratically an entire lesson on these two rows:

copy *.* ramdisk:
set comspec=ramdisk:\command.com

Substitute ramdisk with the letter of the drive to install all the floppy in ramdisk (example: copy *.* d:) and to move the operating system control from the command.com in the floppy to the command.com opied in ramdisk (example: setcomspec=d:\command.com).

In this lesson you can teach the start.bat command with the vol search (find many versions of start.bat after these first notes). This is the core to find the right drive letter where to install the floppy:

findramd.bat
@echo off
echo ***** DR-DOS: type the drive letter of the volume called "VDISK".        ****
echo ***** MS-DOS: type the drive letter of the volume called "MS-RAMDRIVE". ****
echo ***** Letters before ramdisk: HARD DISKS - After ramdisk: may be CD-ROM ****
vol c:
vol d:
vol e:
vol f:
vol g:
vol h:
echo ****************************************************************************

I use it in the Italian lessons as it is, calling it findramd.bat, so to teach only two commands of command.com: echo and vol. Findramd.bat sounds like the findramd.exe of the Windows 98 boot floppy, capable to give the ramdisk in a batch thing called errorlevel. Another variation called "FINDDRD" may be found at: http://www.owenduffy.com.au/software/finddrd.htm.

Lesson 6 : how to complete the operating system with sound and user interface, how to make bootable the user interface (Microsoft Dosshell or other) rewriting autoexec.bat. For example:

autoexec.bat
a:\dosshell.exe

Understand the meaning of these 6 lessons you can build yourself easily the course.
 

AFTER THE LESSONS

I studied a lot the possibility to put an operating system on a floppy disk with good graphics, games and more. So I added notes about some particular programs useful in the few space of a floppy. Then I decided to solve a problem: to obtain a floppy with the parameters of the QNX Demo Floppy (with a graphic web browser and a graphic user interface) but capable to be made by a child.

I solved it with the discovery at the end of the year 2000 of the DR-DOS property to be loaded as boot floppy in a 1.72 MB floppy prepared with Superformat2_7.exe (no web page was presents in internet about this property before my pubblication) and an appropriate use of the graphic browser Arachne and the graphic user interface Desktop2. You can find the results here:

CONCLUSIONS

This course don't teach you how to use a prepared package like Mulinux (a Linux in a floppy), but how to assemble your personal package! Instead of to use, you learn!

To do this for children only capable to read and write (I don't use the age to describe a child, but the knowledge) I use DOS resources in this educative way: lessons are only how to find DOS bricks (the programs, like a lego game, and how to build them for assembling the personal operating system of the children in their single floppy. Of course these bricks must be easy to use.
 

THIS COURSE AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Because this world is made up for the totality by the poor (today over 5 billion of humans live in poverty), this course WILL show you immediately how to have all the power you need from the new technologies without to pay for them.

You need only a floppy to do this. That's all.

This course is made for a "near to freeware computer", without hard disk and sound card. An old  computer without hard disk and sound card has only a "symbolic price", but after you'll can put your floppy in all the computers!

At the end of this page you will find Authors against Digital Divide. Read it!

Now you need only the notes to build your personal operating system with DOS bricks.  It is really like a LEGO brick game!
 

DOS BRICKS

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOS

We'll do it all with DOS. But what is DOS?
It's easy to define the DOS world.
DOS core is only three programs: command.com, io.sys called also ibmbio.sys, msdos.sys called also ibmdos.sys.

IO.SYS is the KERNEL to DOS, COMMAND.COM is the command interpreter...

DOS loads like this:

Master Boot Record -> Boot Sector -> IO.SYS (reads msdos.sys) -> runs through CONFIG.SYS -> runs COMMAND.COM -> runs AUTOEXEC.BAT.
 

SUITES

Microsoft MS-DOS is the original, commercial only, suite: it includes (apart the three fundamental programs) over 30/50 little programs, from the program to format the disks to the program to write a letter...

If you have the old MS-DOS floppies damaged for the time you can download a Microsoft MS-DOS boot disk (with the files you need for the lessons) from this fine site: http://www.bootdisk.com/ . Remember that you MUST be in possession of your legal copy if you want to use it.
But there are other suites:
 

PC DOS	commercial suite	-	http://www-ibm.com/software/os/dos
DR-DOS	commercial suite, freeware for not commercial uses	D	http://www.8ung.at/dos/download.htm
ROM-DOS	commercial embedded suite	D	http://www.datalight.com/demos-b.htm
SuperDOS	commercial suite	-	http://www.bluebird.com/SuperDOS.htm
i3DOS	commercial suite	-	http://www.i3-micro.com/i3dos32.html
PTS-DOS	shareware suite	D	http://www.phystechsoft.com/en/download.html
PDOS	freeware suite	D	http://freespace.virgin.net/paul.edwards3/program.htm
FREEDOS	freeware suite	D	http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files

( D = Download available )

Other suites can be found in the net, especially old versions
(in http://disvr.cjb.net/dos/dls.html you will download for example MS-DOS versions from 1.25 to above or PC-DOS versions from 1.10 to above ).

But remember that usually a suite is big (various MB). It is made for a hard disk. Rarely it is for embedded systems.
 

SINGLE PROGRAMS

DOS has over 20 years and today single programs can be found in the net as commercial, shareware, freeware or still beta (the name of an experimental program, not yet finished) resource.
 

COMMAND.COM

Single command interpreters can be found:
 

4DOS	shareware replacement	D	ftp://ftp.ua.pt/pub/simtelnet/msdos/4dos (4dos602.zip) http:/ www.jpsoft.com/jpbeta.htm (version 7.0 beta)
MOE-DOS	beta replacement	D	http://moe-dos.port5.com/
DOG	freeware replacement	D	http://dog.sourceforge.net/main/main.php
COMMAND2	joke "replacement"	D	http://keypusher.tripod.com/pranks.htm

( D = Download available )

Other command.com replacements can be found in the net, but usually they are old:

DOS-C is a freeware for not commercial uses replacement for the original command.com (since 1993 kernel of the FREEDOS suite) and can be downloaded in http://sunsite.lanet.lv/ftp/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming/hardware/dosc090.zip. But it is an old 1994 version.
 

WHAT DOS WE WILL USE?

We'll use DR-DOS, because it can be used as freeware for not commercial uses. It has a complete suite where to find all the files you need, because it has the three fundamental programs VERY LITTLE, and because it can accept to be loaded as boot operating system in a 1.72 MB floppy disk...

In any case I dedicated some parts of these notes (and a course in Italian for the children) about Microsoft MS-DOS because its diffusion. Probably you have a copy of it, somewhere, at home or at school...
 
 

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