The operating system on any computer is the housekeeper for that computer. It manages the files and data throughout the system and serves as the interface between you, your program and the rest of the computer.

In personal computers you usually find certain generic operating systems, that is versions of the same operating system built for different sets of hardware, to allow a programmer to have a standard set of commands to do similar things on different machines.

PC-DOS, the disk operating system for the IBM-PC computer is a version of the more general MS-DOS, developed for 16-bit microcomputers. OS/2 and UNIX are two other operating systems for advanced microcomputers. Windows NT/2000/XP and NeXT are others. More are coming.

This tutorial describes the...

• parts of DOS,
• the way a computer starts,
• how devices and files are named,
• what makes up a DOS command,
• what some of the simpler DOS commands are,
• how to format a disk,
• how to work with files,
• what subdirectories (folders) are,
• how to work with subdirectories, and, finally,
• what the DOS environment is.

Parts of DOS