Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 21st Oct 2007 10:57 UTC, submitted by Inkslinger77
"Buried deep within Windows' bosom is a carbon-crusted fossil from the ancient days of computing. This aged wart on Windows' soul harkens back to a more primitive time, when computers lacked the oomph to go graphical and mice were nothing but rodents. I speak of the command prompt, whose roots lie in DOS, that antique operating system of the 1980s. DOS is gone now. Yet despite Windows' glorious graphical goodness, a wispy memory of text-based computer life still exists. It's a program called CMD.EXE, and it appears in Windows as the command prompt window. Believe it or not, the command prompt to this day still serves as a useful alternative way to control your computer. Indeed, there are some things you can do in the command prompt window that in Windows' graphical interface are tedious, slow or darn near impossible. Come with me as we discover how an old warhorse like DOS can once again find purpose."
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Member since:2006-10-12
IIRC then in Windows NT 4.0 sometimes cmd.exe reported DOS version 5.0 or something.
If you run “COMMAND.COM” (or some other actual DOS program), the INT 21h function call to return the DOS version reported that it was MS-DOS 5.0; this is buried in ntvdm (the virtual DOS machine that provides emulation services for DOS programs).
CMD.EXE would always report the actual Windows version, as it had nothing to do with the DOS VM.
Member since:2005-08-18
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Member since:
2006-05-19
Cmd.exe is not DOS, like some parts of the article seems to imply.
IIRC then in Windows NT 4.0 sometimes cmd.exe reported DOS version 5.0 or something.