DOSREF v2.0 by Dave Williams              Registration $20.00
MISC JUL91 WILLIAMS MSDOS DOS IBM REFERENCE
FILES: dosref20.sdn

New to SDN

                From the author of FLEX...


        Programmer's
               Technical
                     Reference
                           for MSDOS
                                 and the IBM PC


 This book  is a technical  reference. It is  NOT a tutorial.
Hopefully, this book  is what you'll reach for  when you want
find  out  what  Peter  Norton  or  the "official" references
glossed over.

 This manual  is intended to replace  the various (expensive)
references needed  to program for  the DOS environment,  that
stack of  magazines threatening to take  over your work area,
and those odd  tables and charts you can  never find when you
need them.

 The  various Microsoft  and IBM  publications and references
don't always have the same  information. This has caused some
consternation about  the "undocumented" features  to be found
in DOS. In  general, if a call doesn't appear  in the IBM DOS
Technical Reference it  is considered "undocumented" although
it may be documented by other OEMs or by later Microsoft tech
bulletins.

 Microsoft's offical  policy toward DOS  has been to  put the
burden of  documenting and supporting their  product to their
vendors. Microsoft  will not answer  any questions concerning
DOS  directly since  they don't  officially support  it. This
leaves what  information IBM and other  OEMs (DEC, Zenith, et
al) have chosen to publish, and the information obtained from
programmers who've poked around inside it.

 Now  that Microsoft  is selling  MSDOS 3.3  and 4.0 over the
counter they seem to be dragging their feet over whether they
will  have to  support the  generic version  since it doesn't
have an OEM name on it anymore. In view of their push to OS/2
(OS/2! Just Say No!) further support of DOS seems unlikely.

 The information here is valid for DOS 2.x through 4.x. Where
there  are differences  between  the  two versions  there are
notes in the text. No great effort was expended on DOS 1.x.

 When I started  writing this book, it was  originally for my
own personal use. Then I began  expanding it with the idea of
getting it published, since at  that time there was *nothing*
in print like it. (late 1987) If I had managed to send it off
to the publishers early enough, I  would have had it made. As
it was  I lost six months  having a nice steel  rod put in my
leg after  being run over  by a drug  addict in an  uninsured
car, and half  a dozen similar books were  published by then,
and nobody was interested in mine.  Six months is a long time
in the PC world.


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