C:>

It stands for Disk Operating System but controls more than just disks. There are many varieties of DOS (MSDOS, FreeDOS, TRSDOS, PC-DOS, DR-DOS, etc.) the list goes on and on... mostly in museums today... in fact I had my own version of DOS. I took a copy of MSDOS... uncompiled it... and changed the error messages so they made more sense. For example I changed Bad Command or File Name to Not on this computer! My colleges quickly dubbed it RUDE-DOS.

In any case, the command line...

...meant it was done booting. You now had control of the machine.

Supprisinly... this was a really intimidating. People were actually afraid of that. I found it hard to believe but anyone that could deal with that prompt thing was automatically labeled as smart. Didn't bother me... that's how I got this job. You had to be smart to use the computer... until windows came around... bastards... I had it good.

Just for arguments sake... for all those people that DOS... can't event stand to hear it mentioned. DOS hasn't ever gone away. DOS was under windows until NT came out. Then it was incorporated into it. DOS only supports 16 bit and it had to be upgraded. A carpenter is not going to throw his hammer away just because he bought a pnumatic nail gun. A much better 32 bit version of DOS was incorporated into NT (XP, Vista, 7, etc.). hate