DOS v5.00

• The most significant DOS upgrade in many years, released June 1991.
• Considered to be a "clone" of Digital Research's DR-DOS v5.0 (released over a year earlier).
• "Largest" beta-test program in history, 7,500 testers.
• Included many changes to prepare for Windows 3.0.
• Supports 2.88Mb diskette drives.
• Supports disk partitions up to 2Gb.
• Supports up to 8 hard disks.
• Upgrade version for all earlier DOS versions (5.0UG).
• Major memory-management support. Now possible to have >620Kb for apps:
  1. DOS puts DOS in the (high-memory) HMA (286+) and provides access to UMBs (386+).
  2. DEVICEHIGH and LOADHIGH (LH) let you load device drivers and TSRs outside of the 640K Conventional Memory area (386+).
  3. HIMEM.SYS supports the HMA and Extended Memory (286+).
  4. EMM386.EXE device driver and command support LIM-EMS emulation and UMBs.
  5. MEM provides info on UMBs and EMS; indicates if DOS is loaded high.
• Other commands introduced:
  1. DELOLDOS
  2. DOSKEY a command-line retriever and editor; creates DOS command macros.
  3. DOSSWAP
  4. EDIT, a full-screen text editor.
  5. EGA.SYS
  6. EXPAND
  7. QBASIC, BASIC language development environment (better than GWBASIC). Based on Quick BASIC.
  8. HELP (MS) online syntax help for commands. dosCmdName /? shows some help.
  9. LOADFIX
  10. MIRROR, UNDELETE, UNFORMAT provide data security and ability to recover deleted/lost files.
  11. SETUP to install/upgrade DOS.
  12. SETVER tricks apps into thinking this is a different version of DOS.
• Commands enhanced:
  1. ATTRIB supports hidden and system file attributes.
  2. COMP has some new options.
  3. DEBUG supports 386 opcodes; provides online help via the ? command.
  4. DIR supports sorted listings and selection by file attribute. It can search subdirectories (you can find a file anywhere on the disk), and it displays the total of bytes used by the listed files. It also supports the environment variable, dircmd, for selecting default options.
  5. DOSSHELL is now faster, easier to use, takes less memory, and has more features, including the ability to swap tasks. It is a thoroughly respectable DOS shell now.
  6. ECHO with a period (eg, Echo.) displays a blank line.
  7. EDLIN provides online help via the ? command.
  8. FIND /I performs case-insensitive searches.
  9. FORMAT will save critical data for recovery via Unformat and, with /Q, will re-format diskettes very quickly and safely. Supports 2.88M diskettes.
  10. GRAPHICS supports real printers, such as the HP LaserJet.
  11. MEM /C reports memory usage in a manner actually readable by humans.
  12. RAMDRIVE.SYS
  13. RESTORE /D provides a way to see the names of files on a backup disk.
  14. SMARTDRV.SYS speed up hard disk access using disk-caching.
  15. TIME displays and accepts P or PM to mean afternoon.
• Commands removed:
  1. SELECT (now use the full-featured SETUP program)
  2. BUFFERS=.../X (buffers in EMS not supported; use SMARTDRV.SYS /X)

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Filelist