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From: flowers@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: getting started with MS-DOS
Message-ID: <5190@shemp.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Mon, 23-Mar-87 21:16:48 EST
Article-I.D.: shemp.5190
Posted: Mon Mar 23 21:16:48 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Mar-87 00:57:58 EST
Sender: root@ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU (Margot Flowers)
Distribution: world
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 71



Someone asked about decent sources of information for people who know
about computers but simply don't know MS-DOS.  A few months ago I was
in the same situation.  I found various sources, below, useful.  

The hard thing about finding really useful information that answers
the questions you most likely have based on what you know how to do in
unix is that a large number of the books out there are intended for
people that have no computer sophistication at all.  The current front
runner of these introductory books seems to be:

       Van Wolverton, Running MS-DOS.  -- this book is mostly a rehash
       of the MS-DOS manual, nice and slow, so that the naive won't
       have any trouble understanding it.  Not very informative if
       you're already comfortable with unix.   Published by Microsoft
       so it might be good if you want their official word on things.

The three sources which I've found most useful for going beyond
non-trival use of MS-DOS and finding little idioms and tricks are:

       Van Wolverton, Supercharging MS-DOS. -- While it also reads nice
       and slow, there is actually much useful info in here.  (Also
       published by Microsoft.)

       Kamin, MS-DOS Power User's Guide.  Sybex. -- This book makes a
       good successor to Supercharging...
       
       PC Magazine V6 #4&5 "Digging Deeper into DOS" parts 1 and 2
       (in the PC Lab Notes column).  -- These two articles pull together
       useful tricks using the less common features of DOS, some of
       which are obvious but enough of which are not obvious, so that
       these are worth reading.

These mostly provide useful ways of using MS-DOS, ansi.sys, the
environment, and batch commands in particular.  Other useful sources
I've found are:

      PC Magazine in general -- their various "Productivity" columns,
      especially PC Lab Notes, Power User, User-to-User, and PC
      Tutor; and their articles which provide in-depth examinations of
      various families of software in general (e.g. review of window
      environments in V5#4, articles discussing of ram residency
      virtues and vices in V5#20).

      PC Tech Journal -- e.g. the February issue has a good article
      expositing some of what underlies MS Windows.

      Kelley, PC Secrets, Tips for Power Performance -- Much like the
      Kamin book above (maybe this belongs in the above group).

      Norton, The Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC -- Even if you
      aren't programming, there is still much to use here.  Ray
      Duncon's Advanced MS-DOS probably fits in this niche too.

      Jourdain, Programmer's Problem Solver for the IBM PC, XT, and
      AT.  -- code for doing various things at "high  level" (basic),
      "middle level" (assembly language using interrupts) and "low
      level (assembly language using chip features).

To give you an idea of how these later books can be useful, I've used
specifics from the Norton book, along with info about the use of DEBUG
for entering assembly langauge code described by Van Wolverton, and
information about registers & the assembly language etc. spelled out
in the Jourdain appendices, to write some small pieces of assembly
code to do simple things that I wanted, or to clarify what someone
else's code was doing to know how to change it.

What other worthwhile sources are there?

Margot Flowers   Flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU   ...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers