The DOS 10 Commandments
- I am thy DOS, thou shall have no OS before me, unless Bill
Gates gets a cut of the profits therefrom.
- Thy DOS is a character based, single user, single tasking,
standalone operating system. Thou shall not attempt to make DOS
network, multitask, or display a graphical user interface, for
that would be a gross hack .
- Thy hard disk shall never have more than 1024 sectors. You
don't need that much space anyway.
- Thy application program and data shall all fit in 640K of
RAM. After all, it's ten times what you had on a CP/M
machine. Keep holy this 640K of RAM, and clutter it not with
device drivers, memory managers, or other things that might make
thy computer useful.
- Thou shall use the one true slash character to separate thy
directory path. Thou shall learn and love this character, even
though it appears on no typewriter keyboard, and is unfamiliar.
Standardization on where that character is located on a computer
keyboard is right out .
- Thou shall edit and shuffle the sacred lines of CONFIG.SYS
and AUTOEXEC.BAT until DOS functions adequately for the likes
of you. Giving up in disgust is not allowed.
- Know in thy heart that DOS shall always maintain backward
compatibility to the holy 2.0 version, blindly ignoring opportunities
to become compatible with things created in the latter half of
this century. But you can still run WordStar 1.0
- Improve thy memory, for thou shall be required to remember
that JD031792.LTR is the letter that you wrote to Jane Doe three
years ago regarding the tax deductible contribution that you
made to her organization. The IRS Auditor shall be impressed
by thy memory as he stands over you demanding proof .
- Pick carefully the names of thy directories, for renaming
them shall be mighty difficult. While you're at it, don't try
to relocate branches of the directory tree, either.
- Learn well the Vulcan Nerve Pinch (ctrl-alt-del) for it shall
be thy saviour on many an occasion. Believe in thy heart that
everyone reboots their OS to solve problems that shouldn't
occur in the first place.
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