Naya Aayam Multi-Disciplinary Institute

Jorpati , Kathmandu

A Lab Report
On
“MS-DOS”

Submitted By
Prashant Kc (Roll no20)
 Submitted To
Department of Computer Science
NAMI College
December 7th, 2023
 Acknowledgement

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my computer teacher Gopi Prajapati,

Finally, I would like to thank my parents and close friends, who were always with me
from imagination to the implementation of this project. Without their cooperation, this
project would not have been completed. Only because of all of you, I was able to make
my project successful and make it a good enjoyable experience. It also helped me
increase my skills and knowledge.

I hope you will like my project and appreciate my hard work. Thanks again to all who
supported me.
 Table of content
Page no
Introduction 1
Objectives 2
Theory 3
Conclusion
 Introduction
MS-DOS stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System and is also known as Microsoft DOS. MS-
DOS was the Microsoft-marketed version of the first operating system (OS) to be widely
installed on personal computers (PCs). It was essentially the same OS that Bill Gates's young
company developed for IBM as Personal Computer - Disk Operating System (PC-DOS). In
1981, IBM licensed and marketed its PC-DOS rebranding of MS-DOS to run on IBM PCs. MS-
DOS was released for x86 computers, went through eight major versions and was ultimately
retired from all active support in 2006.
Most users of either DOS system simply referred to it as Disk Operating System. Like PC-DOS,
MS-DOS was and still is a non-graphical, line-oriented, command-driven OS. It has a relatively
simple but not overly friendly user interface. Its prompt to enter an MS-DOS command looks
like this= C:>
The default command prompt shows the disk drive currently in use. This type of computer
interface, where commands are input in response to a text prompt, is called a command-line
interface (CLI). In this example, drive "C:" represents the system's primary hard disk drive.
When booting MS-DOS from a floppy disk, the command prompt would be A:> where "A:"
represents the primary floppy disk drive.
The first version of the Microsoft Windows OS was really an application that ran on top of MS-
DOS. Today, Windows operating systems emulate MS-DOS to continue to support DOS or a
DOS-like user interface for special purposes. In the 1970s before the PC was invented, IBM had
a different and unrelated DOS that ran on smaller business computers. It was replaced by IBM's
VSE (Virtual Storage Extended) OS.
1
 Objectives
1. Education and research
2. Legacy systems
3. Embedded systems
4. Classic older computer games
5. User inertia
2
 Theory
When a computer is powered on, it goes through various steps called the boot process. For a
computer running a disk operating system in the following six steps, such as:

1. The read-only memory (ROM) bootstrap loader reads the Master Boot Record and passes
control over it.
2. The boot record loads the disk operating system into memory, and it takes control of the
machine.
3. The computer transfers data stored on a magnetic disk to its main memory, the random-
access memory.
4. It also transfers data to external devices attached to the computer, such as a computer
screen or printer.
5. The computer provides various applications programming interfaces for programs like
character input/output, memory management, program loading, termination, and handling
input from the user through a keyboard.
6. The OS also provides file management that organizes, reads, and writes files on storage.
The files are organized in a hierarchical structure of directories, subdirectories, and files.
A disk operating system doesn't have a graphical user interface (GUI). Its interface is character-
based, so users must type commands in the command line to indicate what actions they want.
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Features of DOS

Here are some of the distinguishing features of a disk operating system, such as:

 MS-DOS does not offer GUI (Graphical User Interface) and doesn't accept mouse inputs.
It is a character-based interface system where all commands are entered in the text at the
command-line prompt.
 A disk operating system manages files, folders and allows program loading and
execution. It can control hardware devices such as disk, memory and allocate resources.
 MS-DOS offers a file system to organize, read and write files to disk storage.
 It is a single-user operating system and performs various tasks to ensure the proper
operation of systems.
 It uses a 16-bit file allocation table (FAT16), and a 16-bit interface is used to define the
location of the memory of each file uniquely. These identifiers are stored in a tabular
format with the name File Allocation table.
 MS-DOS does not support a multiuser operating system, and it is less secure and does not
have a concept of user roles. It is very lightweight due to its basic interface and limited
features.

Limitations of MS-DOS

Here are the following limitations of the disk operating system, such as:

 Built-in security: DOS does not have built-in security, such as file ownership and
permissions.
 No multiuser or multitasking: It also does not support multiuser or multitasking. It can
only run one program at a time, but it provides direct access to the basic I/O system and
underlying hardware.
 Challenging interface: A user must type in commands and remember commands to run
programs and other OS tasks. For example, typing the command cd \directory name
changes the current working directory to the named directory, and typing the command
dir lists the files in the current directory. This approach makes it difficult for beginners to
use.