Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you wanted to know about AmigaDOS, with John
Kennedy.




Q. What is AmigaDOS?

A. AmigaDOS is a "disk operating system", the Amiga
equivilent of MS-DOS on the IBM-PC. The difference is that
the PC's graphical user interface runs "on top" of MS-DOS,
whilst on the Amiga it runs alongside AmigaDOS.


Q. What can I do with it?

A. From Workbench 2 onwards, almost all the file and disk
management you would have needed to perform could be handled
from the Workbench display with pull-down menus and hot
keys. However, there are still situations when opening a
"Shell" and entering AmigaDOS commands by hand is essential.
In any case, some users prefer using the Shell and find it
quicker and more flexible.


Q. How do I start to use it?

A. To enter AmigaDOS commands you need to open a Shell
window. The Shell is held in the System drawer, but is so
useful many users use the Workbench "Leave out" menu option
to have it permanently on the screen for when they need it.

Clicking on the icon opens up the special Command Line
Interface (CLI) called a Shell. From here you can type
commands and see their results. You can open many Shell
windows at once if you desire. The Shell has many tricks for
making AmigaDOS easier to use, such as pressing the up arrow
key to redisplay the last command typed. 

There are also different Shells not written by Commodore
available. One of the best is KinCON which automatically
tries to finish your filenames, and keeps a record of
everything display in the shell window. KingCON is available
from any PB library.


Q. Where is the documentation for AmigaDOS?

A. If you have an A1200 then unfortunately none was supplied
(a small booklet came with the A4000). If you want printed
documentation the definitive work is the Bruce Smith Books
series "Mastering AmigaDOS, volumes 1,2 and 3".

Most commands will give you a clue as to what they can do if
you follow with with a question mark. At the very least,
your know what arguments follow the command.

Q. What sort of commands can I enter?

A. The most useful commands are "cd" for change directory,
and "dir" for displaying a lit of the files contained within
the current directory. Both can be used with device names.


Q. Why does AmigaDOS seem so slow?

A. If you are using the Amiga with only a floppy disk drive,
AmigaDOS will appear to crawl. This is because many of the
commands are themselves stored on disk in the C: directory,
and need to be loaded before they can be used. Later version
of Workbench can built these commands into the ROM (enter
"resident" to see which ones) and copying the instructions
into ram: before using them will speed them up.

With a hard drive, AmigaDOS is much quicker than a
floppy-only system.


Q. What are device names?

A. Every disk drive on the Amiga has at least one device
name. The name is a sequence of letters, or numbers or both,
ending with a colon (":"). For example, the internal floppy
disk drive is called df0: and the ram disk (which is always
present whether you use it or not) is called ram:. So for
example, to see the list of files on a floppy disk, open a
Shell and enter: dir df0: Using "Assign" you can temporarily
create your own names and refer to them instead.

Sometimes the devices are not "real" (such as the ram disk),
and sometimes a single physical device (a single hard drive
for example) contains more than one device (Work: and
Workbench: for example).


Q. I know the Amiga multitasks, so can I use several commands at once?

A. Yes. Preceed each command with run, for example:

	run dir df0:
	run dir ram:


Q. Can I use batch files like on a PC?

A. Any text file (for example one created with the AmigaDOS
program "ed") can be used as a batch (or script) file: in
other words, the text in the file will be treated as though
it was entered at the keyboard. To start the file working,
either use the "execute" command like this:

	execute my_text_file

or set one of the the text file's special status bits with
the "protect" command like this:

	protect my_text_file +S

Now the text file is a script, and can be used by entering
it's name. You can use this feature to make your own
AmigaDOS commands.

One of the most important script file is the
"startup-sequence" which the Amiga automatically tries to
execute when it is switched on. This file contains
instructions which sets up the way in which the Amiga
operates and defines some Assigned devices. Another
important file is "user-startup" which you can use to enter
your own commands which you want to be executed everytime
the Amiga is switched on. It is similar to the WBStartup
drawer on the Workbench. Both startp-sequence and
user-startup are kept in the S: directory.







TABLE OF USEFUL AMIGADOS COMMANDS

Command     Purpose                     Example

assign     Set up an alternative device assign john: df0:
assign     List devices                 assign
avail      Display free memory          avail
cd         Change Directory             cd df0:
copy       Copy a file or direction     copy ram:john df0:
dir        Directory listing            dir ram:
ed         Edit (or create) text file   ed ram:test
endshell   Shut down the current CLI    endshell
execute    Process file like input      execute ram:test
format     Prepare a disk for use       format drive df0:name Brian quick ffs noicons
info       Display useful facts         info
info       Display facts on a device    info df0:
list       Display a list of files      list df0:
newshell   Open up another Shell        newshell
makedir    Create a new directory       makedir ram:Charlie
resident   List commands "built in"     resident
resident   Add a new command *          resident c:dir pure
run        Start command in background  run dir df0:


(* note. many commands will not work unless the pure keyword
is included. This is because not all commands will work
reliably under multitasking conditions when made resident.
They can always be copied to ram disk instead if this is a
problem: for example, copy c:copy ram:)