BASIC-DOS

A PCjs Retro-Programming Project

BASIC-DOS is on Twitter Project maintained by jeffpar

BASIC-DOS on an IBM PC AT Hard Disk

The machine below is an IBM PC AT (Model 5170) with a 6Mhz 80286, 640K of memory, a Color Display, two 1.2Mb diskette drives, and a 10Mb hard disk. It has no diskettes loaded; instead, it boots BASIC-DOS from its hard disk (drive C:) and runs one full-screen 80x25 session. Unlike the PC and PC XT, the PC AT has a battery-powered real-time clock, so BASIC-DOS starts with the current date and time (type DATE or TIME to see them).

IBM PC AT, 640Kb RAM, 10Mb Hard Disk, CGA

Color Display

Caps

Num

Scroll

F10

Esc

1 !

2 @

3 #

4 $

5 %

6 ^

7 &

8 *

9 (

0 )

- _

= +

Back

Num

Scroll

Tab

[ {

] }

↵

↑ 8

Ctrl

; :

' "

` ~

← 4

→ 6

Shift

\ |

, <

. >

/ ?

Shift

PrtSc

↓ 2

Alt

Space

Caps

Ins 0

Del .

Esc

Tab

F10

Num

Scroll

1 !

2 @

3 #

4 $

5 %

6 ^

7 &

8 *

9 (

0 )

- _

= +

Back

[ {

] }

↵

↑ 8

; :

' "

` ~

← 4

→ 6

\ |

, <

. >

/ ?

Shift

PrtSc

↓ 2

Ctrl

Shift

Alt

Space

Caps

Ins 0

Del .

[Debugger]

Any changes you make to the hard disk are lost when you leave the page, unless you first click Save HD to download the hard disk as an IMG file.

This demo is also available on an IBM PC XT and a COMPAQ DeskPro 386.

These machines have no diskettes loaded; instead, they boot BASIC-DOS from a 10Mb hard disk (drive C:) and run one full-screen 80x25 session.

The hard disk has the system files, CONFIG.SYS and HELP.TXT in the root directory, along with these subdirectories:

BIN contains the BASIC-DOS utilities (eg, FIND, MORE, and SORT) and DEBUG.COM
SAMPLES contains DONKEY.BAS and the other PC DOS BASIC samples
DEMOS contains the programs that the demos run (eg, HELLO.BAT, BENCH.BAS, FIBO.BAT, PAINT.BAS, and PRIMES), and its WOLF3D subdirectory contains the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D (type WOLF3D to run it)
SRC contains the BASIC-DOS source code and its build outputs (type CD \SRC and then MK to rebuild whatever has changed, or MK FINAL CLEAN to rebuild everything)
TESTS contains the test programs (eg, DOSTESTS.COM and STRESS.BAT), MSBASIC.EXE, and SYMDEB.EXE
TOOLS contains MASM, LINK, MAKE, EXE2BIN, and the other MASM 4.00 tools used to build BASIC-DOS

CONFIG.SYS sets PATH$ to C:\;C:\BIN;C:\SAMPLES;C:\DEMOS;C:\TESTS;C:\TOOLS, so programs in those directories can be run from anywhere, and the session’s SHELL line runs HELLO.BAT to display a colorful greeting.

Any changes you make to the hard disk are lost when you leave the page, unless you first click Save HD to download the hard disk as an IMG file.

CONFIG.SYS from the BASICDOS-10MB Hard Disk

REM Single 80x25 console on a hard disk
BUFFERS=8
CONSOLE=CON:80,25
SHELL=COMMAND.COM PATH$="C:\;C:\BIN;C:\SAMPLES;C:\DEMOS;C:\TESTS;C:\TOOLS":HELLO.BAT