response 1 of 164:

May 14 21:39 UTC 1993

From what I've heard, the differences between DOS 5.0 and 6.0 aren't
very great.  I recently went from DOS 3.3 to 6.0, so I felt like it
was a reasonable improvement.  If you already use a product like Stacker
or SuperStor to compress your harddrive, then you probably won't need
DOS 6.0.  Likewise if you already have a decent disk cache program and
hard disk backup program.  
  You change your path with the 'cd' statement.  If you are used to Unix,
it's very similar in DOS, though the slashes are opposite (Unix's slash
goes Up and DOS's slash goes down -- / vs. \).  So, if you are in your
hard drive's root directory (probably C:\) and want to change to your
dos directory, you type 'cd \dos' and then <enter>.  If you don't already
have it, you might want to add a line in your autoexec.bat file like
'prompt $p$g'.  That way you'll always know what your current path is.
  There is also a PATH statement which you can change (in autoexec.bat).
This statement tells DOS where it should look for a file when it can't
be found in the current directory.  At the very least your path statement
should be PATH C:\;C:\DOS  <---assuming you have a C: drive here...
  If you don't have a DOS manual or book, it sounds like you should get
one.  There are a lot of decent ones to be found.  Also, doesn't DOS 5.0
have on-line help?  DOS 6.0 does.
  If your computer has a serial port, you hook up an external modem.
You can also buy internal modems that will plug into the slots inside
your computer (assuming your computer has slots...).
  I thought CGA was pretty much the default for XT's...  Either that or
Hercules monochrome, which provides a lot better resolution than CGA.
See what kind of graphics adapter card is in your XT.  That will tell
you what kind of monitor you can hook up.  Or if you have, for example,
an EGA monitor but not an EGA graphics card, you might think of getting
the proper card.

response 3 of 164:

May 17 02:02 UTC 1993

  Umm... the cd command changes the current directory... path, under DOS, is
something different.  To change your path, try
'SET PATH=C:\;C:\DOS;C:\WHATEVER;C:\ETC;'.
To add to your path, I think the way is:
'SET PATH=$PATH+C:\ONEMORE;' but I may be wrong on this... in any case,
you usually just set the path in the autoexec.bat and don't change it again--
adding is mainly useful when you want to add some local paths on, for example,
a Novell network...

response 5 of 164:

May 17 04:43 UTC 1993

Yes, power, I mentioned that as well as cd.  I think this guy needs a
book more than anything.  Even with our newly found disk space I don't
think we want to hash over every aspect of MSDOS in this i
  Honestly, in your autoexec.bat file you need a stement like:
  path=c:\;c:\dos   I don't think you need the "set.  I don't have it
in my autoexec.bat and it works fine for me...save keystrokes...

response 7 of 164:

May 18 00:09 UTC 1993

`  that probably is wise counsel, Rane. I really am considering buying
Dos for Dummies, a series which has answered all my questions about
my Mac, and the PC. I do recall seeing Dos for Dummies at EB and at 
Egghead software. (I even found a copy of the 2nd edition of the Mac
bible) for 10 bucks.
  This help is not only for me, but hopefully a discussion of WHY dos 6
is better or not will develop. I hope that at least *some* understanding
will come out of all this.

 now, how do I unzip zip files??? do I need an unzipper, or are they
self expanding??

response 9 of 164:

May 18 11:23 UTC 1993

The sad thing is, 2.04g is just as buggy on my machine as the earlier
2.04 versions.  Porbably because I'm still on an 8088.

response 11 of 164:

May 18 14:40 UTC 1993

In general it seems wise to avoid any versions of PKZIP after v1.1 and
before 2.04g.  2.04g will handle 1.1 zip archives so no problem that way.
I think some of the 2.0 bugs had to do with the way zip handled volume
names, and the way it handled multi-disk saves.  I haven't seen
any bug reports on 2.04g, though that doesn't mean there aren't any...

response 13 of 164:

May 19 00:06 UTC 1993

  I did get pkunzip204g and so far it`s fine, although I didn`t use it but
once. I do plan on registering it just as soon as I find out that it`s
bug free

response 15 of 164:

May 19 15:44 UTC 1993

I've noticed a lot of BBS's are switching to 2.04g, refusing to accept
1.10-compressed files.  

response 17 of 164:

May 20 14:47 UTC 1993

2.04G compresses a lot better than 1.10. 

response 19 of 164:

May 22 14:29 UTC 1993

Speed is definitely impressive. I guess if Stacker can get a decent ratio
compressing on the fly, speed in data compression is definitely possible.
I remember the old days on a 12MHz 286 (which was pretty cool back then)
when it took 10-15 minutes to compress a 1.2MB floppy disk. Now, the 486
I'm using can probably do it in 30 seconds...(and the bottleneck for that
is the floppy speed).

response 21 of 164:

May 24 02:24 UTC 1993

Couldn't you do that with a batch file?

response 23 of 164:

May 24 14:16 UTC 1993

YOur internal modem makes a noise? Does it have its own speaker, or does
it use the machine's speaker (though I don't see how it can do that).
The video card is the one into which the video plugs ;-). For what its
worth, my CGA card has two output jacks: a coaxial jack for mono, and
a 9-pin DB jack for RGB color. However my 8088 is a Zenith, with its
peculiarities, so for a more advanced treatment, consult an XT guru.