The machine below is a COMPAQ DeskPro 386 with a 16Mhz 80386, 1Mb of memory (640K of it conventional memory), a VGA Color Display, a 1.2Mb and a 1.44Mb diskette drive, and a 10Mb hard disk. It boots the BASIC-DOS 40-Column Demo diskette and runs two 40-column consoles side by side; use SHIFT-TAB to toggle focus. The boot sector first displays System starting...; press any key (or wait 2 seconds) to boot from the diskette, or press Esc to boot from the hard disk instead. Like the PC AT, the DeskPro 386 has a battery-powered real-time clock, so BASIC-DOS starts with the current date and time (type DATE or TIME to see them).
This demo is also available on an IBM PC, an IBM PC XT, and an IBM PC AT.
The BASIC-DOS 40-Column Demo diskette’s CONFIG.SYS defines two 40-column consoles side by side, each running its own copy of COMMAND.COM. The left console runs HELLO.BAT, a batch file that displays a colorful greeting, while the right console runs PIPES.BAT, which pipes the output of DIR through the TR filter (converting it to upper-case) over and over (press CTRL-C in that console to stop it).
Both consoles are configured with borders, and a double-wide border indicates which console has keyboard focus. Use SHIFT-TAB to toggle focus.
REM Demonstration of two 40-column consoles
SESSIONS=4
CON=VKD$:40,25,1
SHELL=COMMAND.COM PATH$="A:\;A:\EXT;A:\DEMOS;A:\SAMPLES":COLOR 7,1:HELLO.BAT
CON=VKD$:40,25,1
REM CON=COM1:9600,N,8,1
SHELL=COMMAND.COM PATH$="A:\;A:\EXT;A:\DEMOS;A:\SAMPLES":PIPES.BAT
Copyright (c) 2020-2026 Jeff Parsons Released under MIT License