Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/013/cmd185.dqc/CMD185.DOC

Text File | 1984-06-16 | 11.5 KB | 302 lines

COMMAND.COM 1.85
by AN IBMer who cared about us IBM-PCers

Run the BASIC program called CMD185.BAS and it will create you
a .COM program called CMD185.COM  then rename it COMMAND.COM
AND IT WILL BE YOUR NEW COMMAND.COM, COPY IT TO OTHER DISKS AND
YOU WILL BE AMAZED AT WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU. JUST TYPE THE WORD
COMMAND AND IT WILL BOOT ITSELF, IT WILL REMAIN RESIDENT AT ALL TIMES
AND HAS LOTS OF NEW COMMANDS IMBEDED IN IT.. GOOD LUCK......
P.S. You have to del your other COMMAND.COM for this to work
as it is a new replacement and is not an official DOS.

NEW OR MODIFIED INTERNAL COMMANDS

These are modifications made to COMMAND.COM 1.10.
Compatibility has been preserved with DOS and BIOS version 1.10.
Either version of COMMAND.COM is compatible with DOS and BIOS 1.10
and also 1.82 which supports 40 or 80 track single or double sided
drives in any combination, 1.84 which is an enhanced version of
1.82 that supports a simulated drive in memory and 1.85 which is an
enhanced version of 1.84 that supports a Winchester drive.
Unlike command 1.83, there is no transient version and the entire
program remains resident in low memory.
This eliminates the occasional prompts for a DOS disk in drive "A"
but some systems with very little memory might not run some large
programs and utilities such as DISKCOPY might not run very efficiently.

The principal enhancements of 1.85 over 1.84 are:

 1. User defined aliases.
 2. Keyboard stack.
 3. User code area.
 4. Hardware reset support.
 5. Date and time display.
 6. Form feed command for printer.
 7. Peek ahead on batch files (compatible with BAT.COM).
 8. A second alternate drive.
 9. Full screen pauses for the type command.
10. Switch to toggle the keyboard stack on and off.
       (compatible with FULISTPC.COM).


KEYBOARD STACK

A circular stack of 256 bytes stores all new or edited commands that
are entered from the keyboard. One or two character commands are not
saved.
See the stack command.
The up and down arrows are used to cycle through the stack in either
direction. The currently displayed command line is executed when enter
is pressed.
After executing a command, the stack pointer is set between the current
command and the next one. Therefore the previous command can always be
recalled by pressing the up arrow. If the current command is new, it
is placed at the end of the stack and the stack pointer points between
the last command and the first one entered. The 1st command may be lost
if the stack has filled up and wrapped around to the beginning.
At the DOS prompt, the input/browse mode (as opposed to the edit mode)
is active. When any non character key is pressed such as the F1 thru
F10 on the left or the horizontal arrow keys on the right, the edit
mode becomes active.
Once in the edit mode, the stack is not accessible until you hit enter.
A quick exit from the edit mode is ESC and enter. The stack is then
ready for cycling.


BAT.COM COMPATIBILITY

The batch variables have been moved to the lowest part of CMD185.
This provides continuous support for Frank Canova's batch processor
as they will remain in the same locations in subsequent releases of
CMD18X and will remain compatible with BAT.COM if it has been
patched for CMD185.
The incompatability that was introduced with the batch look ahead
feature of 1.84 has been resolved in 1.85.
My apologies to those who were inconvenienced.


ALIAS newname oldname

Any internal or external command name may be changed to an alias of
the user's choice. The newname may be 1 to 8 characters in length.
Any of the legal characters as defined for file names and extensions
may be used.
The old name may be any internal command or a file specification
which may include a drive designator and file extension.
Note that trailing parameters cannot be part of the new name.
Note also that some previous aliases have been retired and that
the standard DOS 1.1 aliases of DEL and REN are built in.

A few examples:
        ALIAS DB DEBUG
        ALIAS FORMAT FMT184.COM
        ALIAS DC  B:DISKCOPY
        ALIAS DBB B:DEBUG.COM
        ALIAS D DIR
        ALIAS H HELP
        ALIAS AKA ALIAS

The alias list is built in memory just above command and
may be any length.
Because of this length flexibility, all aliases must be defined
prior to the installation of resident extensions. After a program
uses INT 27H to terminate but stay resident, the ALIAS command
is no longer available.
If ALIAS is not displayed by the HELP command, it is not available.
Once an alias has been defined, there is no quick way to cancel it.
It is convenient to define the aliases in an AUTOEXEC.BAT file.


ALT [d1:][,d2:]

A provision is made for defining 1 or 2 alternate default drives.
When this option is active, the alternate default drives are searched
for any command that DOS receives from either the keyboard or a batch
file, if it cannot be found on the current default drive.
The alternates are searched in the order in which they were specified.
Do not specify the same drive twice as either current or alternate.
This only applies to .COM, .EXE or .BAT files that are to be
executed and not to files that are included as parameters of a command.
The default is no alternate drives. The ALT command may be followed
by 0, 1 or 2 drive designators. If 0, the currently defined alternates
are nullified.


BOOT

This initiates the same function as CNTL-ALT-DEL except power-on
diagnostics are bypassed and date and time are retained.
If the date is found to be non zero, the DATE$ command is executed
instead of the DATE and TIME commands.
A hardware reset is also supported which senses the generation
of simultaneous parity checks for the I/O channel and the system
board. If either parity check is active by itself, the normal action
is taken, i.e. the system hangs with an error message on the screen.
If both are active together, the BOOT command is executed.
This is advantageous to programmers who often hang up their machines
while debugging new code. This reboot method will fail if the
non maskable interrupt enable latch at I/O port A0H has been reset.
The CNTL-ALT-DEL combination, on the other hand will fail whenever
the processor hangs in a loop with interrupts disabled.
The hardware modification will be published in a separate document.


COLOR [40]

Switches the display to the color graphics monitor if attached.
The display width defaults to 80 columns.


VM/CTS will shutdown at 1200 noon. They should be down no more than 15 minutes. CN(01)
CLS [any command]
Clears the display screen.
This can be issued as an independent command or as a prefix to any
other command. When used as a prefix, the screen is cleared prior to
the execution of the command. e.g. CLS DIR.


DATE$

This command displays the current date and time on the screen.
There is no pause for new information.


DIR [filespec]

Syntax is the same as the DOS 1.1 DIR command except
the /W and /P switches are not used. The display format is similar
to the SDIR directory display program by D. Dievendorf with 2
alphabetized columns showing the name, extension, size, date and time.
If a color graphics adapter card is installed and set for 40 columns,
a single column alphabetized list is produced. There is a pause when
the screen is filled and the display continues when any key is pressed.
Subsequent pauses leave 6 lines visible from the previous full screen
display.


HDIR [filespec]

Same as DIR but includes hidden files.


SDIR [filespec]

Same as DIR but files are listed in single column format.


DO BATCHNAME

When a file name is received as a command, 3 sequential searches are
conducted on the current drive, followed by 3 similar searches on the
alternate drives, if active. The order of the searches is for .COM,
.EXE and then .BAT type files. The delay preceeding the execution of
a batch file can be quite long if the current drive has space for a
large number of files, and about 2 or 3 times as long if the batch
file is on one of the alternate default drives.
The DO command bypasses the first 2 searches and reduces the initial
delay by a large factor.
The batch processor now peeks ahead 1 byte so that the batch disk need
not be reinserted in order to continue after the last batch command
has been processed just to read the end of file marker.


FF

A carriage return is sent to the printer followed by a form feed
to advance the paper to the next page boundary.


FILENAME.COM

When an .COM filename is specified with it's extension, the .EXE and
.BAT searches are bypassed and produces a speedup in those cases
where the subject file is on the alternate drive.


FILENAME.EXE

When an .EXE filename is specified with it's extension, the .COM
search is bypassed and produces a speedup similar to the DO command.
An abbreviated extension of .E has the same effect.


HELP

This command produces a horizontally alphabetized list of all internal
commands followed by a list of all aliases in the order in which
they were defined.


MONO

Switches the display to the monochrome monitor if attached.
The monochrome display width is always 80 columns.


NAME d:DISKETTE NAME

The diskette name is written on the diskette in
drive d:.
The drive must be designated.
The name includes all text following the colon, including leading
blanks and other separators.
The name appears at the top of the directory display produced by
the DIR command.
It can also be accessed by a short machine code routine that can
be included in basic and other high level languages that are
compatible with PCDOS.
The name is stored at the end of the file allocation table.
The maximum length of the name is determined by DOS and is
dependent on the drive capacity, the sector length and the
number of sectors per allocation unit (cluster).
The maximum for DOS 1.10 ,1.83, 1.84 and 1.85 is about 36
characters.


PRINT FILESPEC

This is the same as the TYPE command except the output is sent to
the printer. Tabs are intercepted by this routine and defined at
every 8th column. No output appears on the display screen.


STACK

Toggles the stack switch on and off. If the stack is disabled
before the command is issued, it is enabled and vice-versa.
If FULISTPC.COM is to be run, the stack must be disabled to
allow FULISTPC to intercept commands.
The status of the switch is displayed each time the command is
invoked.


TYPE [/P] FILESPEC

The TYPE command is enhanced to include the /P switch for pauses
when the screen is full. Six lines from the previous screen are
retained on the screen at the pause. No pauses occur if the /P
switch does not preceed the file specification.


USER ROUTINES

Space has been set aside so that users of CMD185 can insert there
own machine code routines. Two contiguous areas have been defined.
Their vectors can be found in the internal command list near 1800H.
The byte following the command name should be any non zero value if
you want the command interpreter to check for valid drive specifiers
following the command name otherwise zero. The next word is the vector
to the command code. The routine should end with a near return.
Each area has 128 bytes available. They may be used as 2
separate routines or combined into a single larger routine.
The vectors in the internal command table must be set appropriately.

Thanks to GENE PLANTZ for having this on his CHICAGO BBS and making
it available..
Capital PC User Group Software EXchange  [phone] for IBMPC use only
4-22-83 RMS