The machine below is an IBM PC XT (Model 5160) with a 4.77Mhz 8088, 640K of memory, a Color Display, two diskette drives, 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. The PC XT has no clock to keep the date and time, so this page types DATE and TIME commands with the current date and time at the first prompt.
This demo is also available on an IBM PC, an IBM PC AT, and a COMPAQ DeskPro 386.
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