JP Software: Even in these decadent latter days of graphical user interfaces, the command line remains the fastest and easiest way to accomplish many complex or repetitive tasks. What a shame that Microsoft's bundled command processors are so pathetic! Fortunately, there is an alternative. JP Software makes and supports high-quality command shells for DOS and Windows. For integrated command history, aliases, filename completion, visited-directory history, color directory listings, internal variables and functions, command logging, popup selection windows, NoClobber support, sensible wildcards, an interactive batch debugger, and many other features that our favorite monopoly will never implement in COMMAND.COM, check out 4DOS. JP also offers a closely related 4NT for 32-bit Windows; 4DOS and 4NT are notably more compatible with each other than are Microsoft's COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE. 4DOS has recently been released as unsupported, no-charge software; download from http://jpsoft.com/download.html. (4NT and Take Command remain high-quality, fully supported shareware.) Highly recommended for anybody who spends much time at the prompt.
Luchezar Georgiev has taken over maintenance of 4DOS, and has new builds available which fix some long-standing misfeatures and even a bug or two. He has also added a few new commands and functions. Lucho's builds appear to be worthy successors to JP's commercial releases. Visit his “Revived 4DOS” site at http://4dos.hit.bg to download his updated versions.
Good places for discussion of 4DOS, NDOS, 4NT etc. include the official
JP Software
Support
Forum and the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.msdos.4dos. The
latter is best accessed with a news client such as Forte's
Agent, but in a pinch
you can use Google
Groups via any decent
web
browser.
Klaus Meinhard's 4DOS pages have been resurrected at http://www.4dos.info.
When forced to use COMMAND.COM, a good command history and aliasing utility is a must. Microsoft's bundled DOSKEY is lame; try Eric Tauck's Toddy instead.
Udo Kuhnt's DR-DOS Enhancement Project updates DR DOS with FAT32 support and other useful features. New life for a great old OS; anyone who still uses real DOS should definitely check this out.
Rich Green's DOS Freeware site: An invaluable resource for anybody still using DOS. Links to hundreds of free programs sorted into general categories like text editors, archive utilities, file managers, and so on and on. Most include detailed reviews. This is the spiritual successor to Yves Bellefeuille's freeware site.
The Freeware Hall of Fame: You have to dig for the gold at this site, but it's there. Once you get past the JKF Coverup and the Johnny Carson interview (and others), you'll find a staggeringly huge list of MS-DOS-based freeware and shareware. Files are sorted both by general category and by legal status — freeware first, then similar shareware. Descriptions tend to be very short, but the sheer volume must be the result of years of work.
The Garbo MS-DOS collection: Huge compendium of DOS-related shareware, freeware, and information. Maintained by Professor Timo Salmi, probably Finland's best-known hacker after Linus.
Most of my utilities are created with Eric Isaacson's A86 assembler, a wonderful shareware program which converts source into executable with a minimum of fuss and horsefeathers. He also offers a more advanced A386 supporting newer CPUs, and a matching pair of disassemblers. Not being a 'real' programmer and having no need for the more advanced features, I haven't used these myself -- but daresay they are of the same high quality as A86.
NASM: The Netwide Assembler project. An open-source assembler for Intel 8086 and compatibles; supports all instructions up through the MMX extensions. It doesn't optimize as A86 does, but it's free: anybody can download and use it.
The FreeDOS Project: Headed by James Hall, an ambitious attempt to provide an open-source alternative to Microsoft's longtime cash cow.
Elvis: A free workalike for the vi text editor, ported to MS-DOS (and Windows and various other environments.) All the power and hairy inscrutability of vi, plus an interesting assortment of new capabilities including multiple files, multiple windows, and user-definable syntax highlighting for a myriad of languages. Steve Kirkendall.
Pedit: A freeware text editor by Paul Brand. Very straightforward and easy to use, especially if you're familiar with either version of MS's EDIT. It has some innovative improvements, such as integrated support for the clipboard and Windows printer drivers when running in a DOS box. Not open-source, unfortunately.
UPX: A high-quality, freeware executable packer with source code. I compress many of my DOS-based programs with it, but it can actually pack many other kinds of programs as well: device drivers, Win32 programs, Linux executables.... By Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar.
The Jargon File: If you've ever wondered why "bar" always follows "foo," what kind of "bug" affected Grace Hopper's computer, or whether it's legal to blow a PROM in Alabama, then Eric Raymond's site is for you. <plug> Also available in book form -- buy it and help keep a True Hacker off the streets. </plug>
This update 2007-01-15. Added link to Lucho's Revived 4DOS site.
Previous update 2005-11-30. Added the JP support forum and comp.os.msdos.4dos, and Enhanced DR DOS; updated links.
Previous update 2005-01-17. Klaus Meinhard's site has a new home.
Charles Dye, raster@highfiber.com