MS-DOS Emulator

MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an early operating system developed by Microsoft in the early 1980s. It was widely used on IBM-compatible personal computers and is known for its command-line interface, where users type commands to perform tasks rather than using a graphical interface. MS-DOS was foundational in the development of later Windows systems and provided basic functions for file management, program execution, and device control.

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Functions of an Operating System

An Operating System (OS) is an essential system software needed to manage a computer’s hardware and software resources.

The main functions of an operating system (OS) include:

• Process Management & Multitasking: Controls and manages tasks and processes, allocating resources and CPU time to each one, and for some OS such as Windows or MacOs enabling the processing of several applications at the same time (multi-tasking).
• Memory Management: Allocates and manages computer memory for applications and system processes.
• File System Management: Provides a structure for data storage, allowing users to save, retrieve, and manage files using folders and sub-folders.
• Peripheral Management: Manages hardware devices such as printers, disk drives, and input/output devices.
• User Interface: Provides an interface (mostly graphical or command-line) for users to interact with the system and run applications.
• User Management: Protects system data and resources from unauthorised access, ensuring system integrity. Maintains user accounts and access levels.

MS-DOS Task

The purpose of this task is to create a folder structure using the command line interface of MS-DOS. By completing this task we will focus on two of the main functions of an operating system:

• File Management: To create your folder structure, you will create and navigate through a set of folders and sub-folders.
• User Interface: Your will create your folder structure using a set of MS-DOS commands using a command line interface (CLI): A text-based interface where the user type instructions on a command prompt. In the early days all Operating Systems where based on a command line interface. These were progressively replaced by Operating Systems such as Windows that are based on a Graphical User Interface (GUI) where user can view their folder structure in a window, using icons that they can click on and drag and drop within the folder structure making it a lot more intuitive to use the system.

In MS-DOS, the main commands to navigate through and maintain a folder structure are:

DOS Command	Purpose
dir	To list the content of a directory/folder.
cd foldername	To open a directory/folder. This is used to access a subfolder
cd ..	To go back to the parent directory/folder
cd /	To go back to the root directory/folder (e.g. C: drive)
mkdir foldername	To make a new sub-directory/folder.
rename oldname newname	To rename a file or a directory/folder.
rmdir foldername	To delete a folder/directory.
cls	To clear the screen
time	To display the current date and time
help /all	To display the help screen

MS-DOS Emulator

Use our MS-DOS emulator and the commands listed above to recreate the following folder structure:

Click on the above screenshot to access the online MS-DOS emulator.

Getting Started

Try the following command to help you get started.

First, let’s list the content of the C: Drive (Root) by using the dir instruction:

You can see here a list of all the directories and files within the C drive.

To create the folder called “MyFiles” we will use the following instruction:

You can type the dir command again to check that your folder has been successfully created:

We will then open the MyFiles folder:

We can check the content of this empty folder:

We will then create the Maths subfolder:

We can check the content of the MyFiles folder to see if now contains a new Maths subfolder:

Let’s go back to the parent folder:

It’s also possible to go back to the root folder using:

You can now repeat these steps to recreate the folder structure described above (see above picture).