I am thy DOS, thou shall have no OS before me, unless Bill Gates
gets a cut of the profits therefrom.
Thy DOS is a character based, single user, single tasking,
standalone operating system. Thou shall not attempt to make DOS
network, multitask, or display a graphical user interface, for that
would be a gross hack.
Thy hard disk shall never have more than 1024 sectors. You dont
need that much space anyway.
Thy application program and data shall all fit in 640K of RAM.
After all, its ten times what you had on a CP/M machine. Keep holy
this 640K of RAM, and clutter it not with device drivers, memory
managers, or other things that might make thy computer useful.
Thou shall use the one true slash character to separate thy
directory path. Thou shall learn and love this character, even though
it appears on no typewriter keyboard, and is unfamiliar.
Standardization on where that character is located on a computer
keyboard is right out.
Thou shall edit and shuffle the sacred lines of CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT until DOS functions adequately for the likes of you.
Giving up in disgust is not allowed.
Know in thy heart that DOS shall always maintain backward
compatibility to the holy 2.0 version, blindly ignoring opportunities
to become compatible with things created in the latter half of this
century. But you can still run WordStar 1.0.
Improve thy memory, for thou shall be required to remember that
JD031792.LTR is the letter that you wrote to Jane Doe four years ago
regarding the tax deductible contribution that you made to her
organization. The IRS Auditor shall be impressed by thy memory as he
stands over you demanding proof.
Pick carefully the names of thy directories, for renaming them
shall be mighty difficult. While youre at it, dont try to relocate
branches of the directory tree, either.
Learn well the Vulcan Nerve Pinch (ctrl-alt-del) for it shall be
thy saviour on many an occasion. Believe in thy heart that everyone
reboots their OS to solve problems that shouldnt occur in the first place.