MSDos mucking around...

[stayouttadabunker]

It's been awhile and I've forgotten again how to slow down the super fast scroll
whenever I type in "dir" or "help" in the command prompt while open in dos.
How do you do that again?
It zooms right by the top half of the help section...I need help for the help section...  
Jay had an excellent suggestion last year...of course I've forgot how he does it...
I tried looking back through my posts...unfortunately, I have way too many....

[Brianzz]

dir /p

that gives you a page at a time

[StatFreak]

Some more DOS window tricks in XP (Don't know about Vista):

You can set the layout size of the default cmd window to hold thousands of lines. You can then scroll back to view everything.

The settings for DOS windows can be saved and remembered for each separate program that calls such a window. As long as you use the same method to open your window each time (I go to the Run textbox and run "cmd") you can set things the way you like and it will always open that way.

With your DOS window open, click on the tiny icon in the upper left corner or press <Alt><Shift>. Then select "Properties". Click on the layout tab. Note that there are separate settings for the displayed size of the window and the screen BUFFER size. Set the buffer width to the same number as your selected screen width. Then set the BUFFER height to a huge number. I set mine to 6000. The window will now retain the last 6000 lines of data until it is closed, and you can use the scroll bar to view everything.

When you click OK, Windoze will prompt you to either "Apply properties to current window only" (the default), or to "Save properties for future windows with the same title." Select the second option and click OK.

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You can also use the "more.exe" program with a pipe instead of the  /p option. (But there's no reason to do this)

dir | more

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You can also save the output of your DIR command to a file and then view the file:

DIR > [myfile.ext]

No extension is implied, so if you want the file to behave as a text document, add ".txt" to your file name.


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Once you've set your buffer to hold lots of data, you can copy some or all of the contents of your DOS window to the clipboard.

Again, click on the little icon at the top left corner. This time click on "Edit / Mark"
For keyboard users, press (<Alt><Shift>) then E K.

Now use the mouse (or press and hold <Shift> and use the cursor keys) to select a SQUARE block of text. This is OLD SCHOOL. It doesn't select lines, it selects a rectangle -- like a selection box in a photo program.

Press <ENTER> to copy the block to the clipboard.


You can also Paste clipboard text INTO the DOS window using the same menu. Just select "Edit / Paste" instead  (or  (<Alt><Shift>) then E P).

[stayouttadabunker]

Thanks Stat &Brianzz! 

That was SO freakin' cool!!!
I did NOT KNOW about the little icon opening up the dialog box for properties....
MAN! You learn something new EVERYDAY!!!

[stayouttadabunker]

Okay, this is why is was asking....
I'm not sure if I should start a new topic but here it goes.

I got on the MCUmall website as "Stayouttadabunker" and pposted a question there
about my GQ-4X programmer reading a chip I have for the Bally Mastercom250.
http://www.mcumall.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3001
A regular member there (possibly a MCUmall employee/designer) named "ZLM" replied to me with this>>>

"Try to add devices line into devices.txt:
Name="SST28SF040A",ID="BF04",Class="AT29C040A",Category="FLASH",MFG="SST";
Please let me know if it works."

I guess I'm the guinea pig tester for their research & development team.....

So, I'm trying hard like heck to find the "device.txt" files in msdos.
I have to add the aforementioned lines so my GQ-4X programmer can display the new chip device in the dialog boxes .

Now you see why I was "mucking around with dos"...

[StatFreak]

You don't need DOS to do that. You can search for the file in file explorer and use notepad to edit the file.

I'll let you know where it is located in a minute...


It's here:
C:\Program Files\GQ USB Programmer

and it's called devices.txt, not device.txt
You won't find it searching for device.txt because computers are literal.

All of the preset devices are in that file. I would suggest putting the new entry at the top of the list until you've confirmed that the addition works. Once you're sure that it works correctly, I would move it to the appropriate place in the list. Finding the right spot might take some browsing.

[jay]

To search for something in MSDOS

CD \                                     (takes you to the root [top] of your hard drive)
Dir /S device.txt                     ( /S will search all subdirectories from your current location downwards - this is why you want to be at the root of your hard disk)

To echo Stats comments - Windows has an indexing feature that makes searching through Windows faster.
You will get a box with all the list of the file names in it.
The .TXT extension is also defaulted to Notepad so editing is relatively easy as you simply double click on the file show in the searcb box)

IF you wanted to edit the file in DOS you would first have to be in the right directory and that can get a bit ugly due to the extended file names.

For instance to change into the directory called Progam Files
CD \Progra~1 is the command to do this as DOS was designed around the 8.3 nominclature (8 character file names 3 character extensions)

alternatively
CD "\PROGRAM FILES"
does work but if you get into some fancy stuff the quotes kind of get into the way.

[StatFreak]

To add to Jay's post, you can use wild cards to change directories in the new DOS. This makes changing directories much easier.
The trick is to use enough letters to make the directory unique, or you will end up in the first directory that matches, even if it's not the one you intended.

For example, to change to the PROGRAM FILES directory, you can just type the following, because there are no other directories off of the root that start with "pr":

cd \pr*


To get directly to the "GQ USB Programmer" directory, try this:

cd \pr*\gq*


But as I mentioned, you don't need DOS to do what you need to do.


Stat

[stormrider]

Bunker,

Is that the chip you pulled from Position U7 on the mastercom250 board ?
if so first time I seen that #
Mine have all been AM29F040B then again it's just a flash chip
so you can play all you want with it,make sure you save it first before you start editing the fields
its good for a starting point for where to edit.

Tim

[dpalmi]

To add to Jay's post, you can use wild cards to change directories in the new DOS. This makes changing directories much easier....

To add to that....

You can also use the TAB key to autofil directory names.  Go to a command line, change directories to c:\ ("CD \") and type "pr" and press TAB - should autofil "Program Files" for you.  If there are multiple directories that fit that criteria, pressing TAB again will scroll through them.  Follow?

Dan #2

[stayouttadabunker]

Awesome stuff guys!  Thanks a lot! 
I won't use the dos way to edit the device list.
Notepad seems to be the way to go.

As far as the dos stuff, I just don't use it enough anymore to remember how to use it...lol
Thanks a bunch for the dos refresher course!  
I used to have an old computer that I tried messing around
with that dos stuff on in case I phug it up...
Again, thanks for all you guys help on this...
I'll mess around with it in the morning...

On another note, I had problems out herein the Northeast kingdom as far as trying to log in.
I couldn't get back on and I didn't even know if my post made it onto the website.
I kept getting the "Firefox Cannot Locate Server" message -
so I headed out the door and played a round of golf .
 
It was beautiful out! 

[brichter]

I kept getting the "Firefox Cannot Locate Server" message -
so I headed out the door and played a round of golf .

That's a DNS failure. Try using the ip address next time you see the DNS failure. If it works, change your DNS servers or edit your hosts file as mentioned in the other thread.

[StatFreak]

To add to Jay's post, you can use wild cards to change directories in the new DOS. This makes changing directories much easier....

To add to that....

You can also use the TAB key to autofil directory names.  Go to a command line, change directories to c:\ ("CD \") and type "pr" and press TAB - should autofil "Program Files" for you.  If there are multiple directories that fit that criteria, pressing TAB again will scroll through them.  Follow?

Dan #2

I forgot all about that one! What's cool about the TAB is that you don't even need to type any letters at all. If you just type "cd " the TAB key will scroll through all the available sub-directories. If you need to navigate a directory several levels down, you can use the TAB several times in one command. For example, from the root, type "cd " and then press tab until it displays
cd "Documents and settings"
Then, instead of pressing <ENTER>, press "\". You can now use the TAB key again to look through the directories in "documents and settings". You can continue in this manner as deep as you need to go before pressing ENTER, which will finally execute the single cd command and take you to your final destination.

It's a nice feature to have when you've forgotten the names of the directories along the path to the one you want to be in.

Of course, you can add letters to shorten the list at any point as you build the command.