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IBM 5160

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Re: IBM 5160

#11

Post by AnimalMuppet »

netsharc wrote: post #7

> The executables are located in C:\DOS (or c:\dos, because DOS don’t care about casing) Somewhat true. IIRC, DOS changes all path input to uppercase and tries to find a file/directory which is labelled in uppercase. If some program manages to create a file which has a lowercase character in its name (for example FOo.TXT), you can't touch it with for example DEL, because DEL FOo.TXT would be converted to DEL FOO.TXT,…

IIRC, you could still get it with DEL FO*.TXT

Re: IBM 5160

#13

Post by bitwize »

netsharc wrote: post #7

> The executables are located in C:\DOS (or c:\dos, because DOS don’t care about casing) Somewhat true. IIRC, DOS changes all path input to uppercase and tries to find a file/directory which is labelled in uppercase. If some program manages to create a file which has a lowercase character in its name (for example FOo.TXT), you can't touch it with for example DEL, because DEL FOo.TXT would be converted to DEL FOO.TXT,…

This was a problem with BASIC. It would uppercase file names before saving, but it accepted spaces in file names just fine, making them similarly difficult to deal with at the DOS command line. I re,ember some kid had left a file called "THE PROG.BAS" on one of the school's computers, and I couldn't do anything to it from DOS...

Re: IBM 5160

#15

Post by salgernon »

non-entity wrote: post #9

Jesus that last picture. I absolutely love and hate it! I have the luggable version of the XT, but sadly no disks for it. I do have a semi-cursed idea to bootstrap it using a modern PC, the serial port, and a machine code program poked in via the ROM BASIC, but its been backlogged for a while. Something else neat, the manual for these have the BIOS source listed.

ADTPro[1] is a package for Apple II class machines that will bootstrap a diskless machine over cassette tape interface or serial port. If you have a disk but no usable media, it will let you image a boot disk.

[1] https://adtpro.com/

Re: IBM 5160

#16

Post by xenadu02 »

COPY CON FILE.TXT is a "text editor" that got me by a number of times.

It takes text input from the terminal quite literally. No backspacing, no editing. You'll just get control characters in the resulting file.

Type it right the first time or start over. Brutal.

But it works from a disk that has only IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM.

Re: IBM 5160

#18

Post by jandrese »

netsharc wrote: post #7

> The executables are located in C:\DOS (or c:\dos, because DOS don’t care about casing) Somewhat true. IIRC, DOS changes all path input to uppercase and tries to find a file/directory which is labelled in uppercase. If some program manages to create a file which has a lowercase character in its name (for example FOo.TXT), you can't touch it with for example DEL, because DEL FOo.TXT would be converted to DEL FOO.TXT,…

Probably should be glad that DOS doesn't support Unicode in filenames. Running toupper() on foreign words can lead to some unpredictable results.

Re: IBM 5160

#20

Post by rootbear »

xenadu02 wrote: post #16

COPY CON FILE.TXT is a "text editor" that got me by a number of times. It takes text input from the terminal quite literally. No backspacing, no editing. You'll just get control characters in the resulting file. Type it right the first time or start over. Brutal. But it works from a disk that has only IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM.

A few years ago this saved my bacon when we had a piece of lab equipment that booted DOS (5.0-ish, I think) from a CF card. There was some problem with it and I fixed it by remembering how to copy console input into a file. Input was terminated with ^Z, which I also managed to remember.
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