, so-and-so writes:". Also cut the original article down as
much as possible; just keep enough of it to remind readers of the
context.

* Keep lines in posted articles to 72-75 characters. Many newsreaders
chop off column 81 or arbitrarily insert a newline there, which makes
longer lines difficult or impossible to read. But you need to keep
well below 80 characters per line to allow for the > characters that
get inserted when other people post follow-ups to your article.

* Keep your signature to 4 lines or less (including any graphics) and
for heaven's sake make sure it doesn't get posted twice in your
article.

* Don't post email without first obtaining the permission of the sender.

------------------------------

Subject: - How can I learn more about Usenet?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

There are two important newsgroups for learning about how Usenet and
newsreader software works:

* News.announce.newusers contains periodic postings that everybody is
asked to read before posting anything to Usenet. (In theory, all new
users are subscribed to news.announce.newusers automatically. But in
practice not all newsreader software does that, so that many people
violate the guidelines given there simply because they don't know
about them.)

* News.newusers.questions is described as "Q & A for users new to the
Usenet". But new and long-time users can ask or answer questions about
Usenet and newsreader software there. There's an important article,
"Welcome to news.newusers.questions! (Weekly posting)", that everyone
is asked to read before posting to news.newusers.questions. (See below
for ways to get a copy of that article.)

The following postings in news.announce.newusers might be considered the
"mandatory course" for new users:

* Introduction to news.announce.newusers

* What is Usenet

* Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

* Rules for posting to Usenet

* A Primer on How to Work with the Usenet Community

* Hints on writing style for Usenet

* Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette

The articles mentioned above are downloadable via ftp from rtfm.mit.edu
in the following files:

Welcome to news.newusers.questions (Weekly posting):


Introduction to news.announce.newusers:


What is Usenet:



Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:


Rules for posting to Usenet:


A Primer on How to Work with the Usenet Community:


Hints on writing style for Usenet:


Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette:


For rtfm.mit.edu instructions, see [Where are FAQ lists
archived?]

------------------------------

Subject: - What other technical newsgroups should I know about?
Date: 7 Feb 2002 14:35:45 -0400

It is impractical to attempt to list all relevant newsgroups here. The
few that are listed are some of the older newsgroups. To find additional
groups use your newsreader's newsgroup search facility.

Caution: Some of these newsgroups have specialized charters; you'll
probably get flamed (and deserve it) if you post to an inappropriate
group. Most groups have FAQ lists that will tell you what's appropriate.
Don't post a request for the FAQ list; instead, retrieve it yourself:
see [Where are FAQ lists archived?]

* The various misc.forsale.computers.* are where you post notices of
equipment, software, or computer books that you want to sell. Please
don't post or crosspost those notices to comp.os.msdos.programmer.

* The various comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.* groups (formerly
comp.windows.ms.programmer) are for articles specifict to the various
Microsoft Windows platforms.

* The various comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.* groups are for more
hardware-oriented discussions of the machines that run DOS.

* The various comp.lang.* groups for articles and questions on the
programming languages. Caution: some groups welcome discussions that
are operating-system dependent or vendor specific; others do not. For
example, comp.lang.c is definitely _not_ for questions about
programming DOS or PC system features, even if the programs are
written in C.

* comp.binaries.ibm.pc.wanted: AFTER you have looked in the other
groups, this is the place to post a request for a particular binary
program.

* comp.archives.msdos.announce (moderated) explains how to use the
archive sites, especially Garbo and SimTel, and lists files uploaded
to them. Discussions belong in comp.archives.msdos.d, which replaced
comp.binaries.ibm.pc.archives in December 1992.

* comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d is for discussions about programs posted in
comp.binaries.ibm.pc, and only those programs. This is a good place to
report bugs in the programs, but not to ask where to find them (see
cbip.wanted, above). comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d is NOT supposed to be a
general PC discussion group.

* comp.sources.misc: a moderated group for source code for many computer
systems. It tends to get lots of Unix stuff, but you may also pick up
some DOS-compatible code here.

* alt.sources: an unmoderated group for source code. Guidelines are
posted periodically.

* comp.os.msdos.djgpp is specifically for support of DJGPP. For more
information on DJGPP see [What and where is DJGPP?]

* comp.os.msdos.programmer.turbovision is specifically for programming
in Turbo Vision.

* rec.games.programmer discusses many graphics programming topics.

* alt.msdos.batch specializes in the discussion of MS-DOS batch files.

* alt.msdos.batch.nt specializes in the discussion of batch files for
Windows NT, 2000, and XP.

------------------------------

Subject: - Where are FAQ lists archived?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

Very possibly the FAQ list you want is already at your site. Check the
newsgroup news.answers; if your site doesn't carry news.answers, check
comp.answers, rec.answers, etc., according to the top-level name in the
FAQ list's "home" newsgroup. Articles are posted to the *.answers groups
in a way that should make them last until the next versions are posted.
If they expire sooner at your site, you might want to lobby your
sysadmin to treat the moderated *.answers groups as a special case and
grant them longer expiration times than other groups.

To ftp most FAQ lists, connect to
. The name of the
file that you want is the Archive-name from the top of the article. For
instance, if the Archive-name were software-eng/part1 you would retrieve
.

By email (only if you have no ftp access, please), the server is
. It accepts "send" commands that omit
the leading "/pub/" from file names; for example:

send usenet-by-group/news.answers/software-eng/part1

For full instructions about the mail server, send it a message
consisting of these two lines:

help
index

Not just FAQ lists, but every article listed in the "List of Periodic
Informational Postings" (LoPIP) can be obtained by ftp or email from
rtfm.mit.edu. If you have an old copy of an informational article, look
for an "Archive-name" at the beginning. The article is stored under that
name at . If the
article has no Archive-name, check the first name on the Newsgroups line
and change to that directory under
.

Stan Brown also maintains a FAQ on finding FAQs. It can be found at
.

------------------------------

Subject: - Where can I get the latest copy of this FAQ list?
Date: 14 Aug 2003 06:46:14 -0400

The FAQ's home page is at . The latest
version of the FAQ can always be found there.

Additionally there are several sites that archive the FAQ list. A couple
of the more popular FAQ archives are

and
.

For more information on the FAQ archives, see [Where are FAQ
lists archived?]

------------------------------

Subject: Section 2. General Reference
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

The General Reference section contains information about finding popular
online MS-DOS reference materials.

------------------------------

Subject: - Are there any good on-line references for PC
hardware components?
Date: 8 Feb 2002 19:36:40 -0400

Good reports of HELPPC21 have been posted. It is downloadable as:


This hypertext system contains much information on ports and other
hardware, as well as some overlap with Ralf Brown's interrupt list
[What and where is Ralf Brown's interrupt list?]. It is
shareware ($25).

Additional information (and more recent) information can be found in
Ralf Brown's interrupt list; see [What and where is Ralf
Brown's interrupt list?] for information on locating the list.

------------------------------

Subject: - Are there any good on-line references for PC
interrupts?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

The definitive work is Ralf Brown's interrupt list. For more information
see [What and where is Ralf Brown's interrupt list?].

------------------------------

Subject: - What and where is Ralf Brown's interrupt list?
Date: 8 Feb 2002 19:37:16 -0400

Ralf Brown's Interrupt List contains megabytes of information on
documented and (officially) undocumented BIOS and DOS interrupts, DOS
tables, and interrupts hooked by many software packages.

The distribution files contain not only the actual list, but also a
collection of utilities and conversion programs for the list.

Ralf Brown's Interrupt List can be downloaded from his page at:


HTML versions of Ralf Brown's Interrupt List can be found at:

*

*

Updates are announced in comp.archives.msdos.announce and on Ralf
Brown's web page at:

Ralf's web page contains the somewhat unassuming line: "[h]e is
well-known in cyberspace for maintaining the Interrupt List..." Ralf has
done astounding work as the maintainer of the list; his work has been
greatly appreciated by thousands of programmers.

------------------------------

Subject: - Where can I find lex, yacc, and language grammars?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

The FAQ list of the comp.compilers newsgroup answers this for BASIC, C,
Pascal, and other languages. See [Where are FAQ lists
archived?]

------------------------------

Subject: - What's the best book to learn programming?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

Sorry, this FAQ list cannot settle religious arguments.

Much of the heat over this topic arises because each person believes
that the book that he or she learned from is the best book, but
different people have very different experiences of the same book. The
only person who can tell you which is the best book for learning a given
topic is you.

Your best bet is to go to a fairly well stocked bookstore when you have
a couple of hours to spare. Start at one end of the shelf and work your
way methodically through every book that looks like it might cover what
you want to learn. Look at the tables of contents; read a page or two
from each book. Then make your decision. If money is a problem or if
you're not sure of your choice, check out your top two or three from
your library.

------------------------------

Subject: - Why won't my code work?
Date: 7 Feb 2002 14:44:40 -0400

First you need to try to determine whether the problem is in your use of
the programming language or in your use of MS-DOS and your PC hardware.
(Your manual should tell you which features are standard and which are
vendor- or MS DOS- or PC-specific. You have read your manual carefully,
haven't you?)

If the feature that seems to be working wrong is something related to
your PC hardware or to the internals of MS-DOS, this group is the right
place to ask. (Please check this FAQ list first, to make sure your
question isn't already answered here.)

On the other hand, if your problem is with the programming language, the
comp.lang hierarchy (including comp.lang.pascal.* and comp.lang.c) is
probably a better resource. Please read the other group's FAQ list
thoroughly before posting. (These exist in comp.lang.c, comp.lang.c++,
comp.lang.modula3, comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.perl; they may exist in
other groups as well. comp.lang.pascal.borland has a Mini-FAQ.) It's
almost never a good idea to crosspost between comp.os.msdos.programmer
and a language group.

Before posting in either place, try to make your program as small as
possible while still exhibiting the bad behavior. Sometimes this alone
is enough to show you where the trouble is. Also edit your description
of the problem to be as short as possible. This makes it look more like
you tried to solve the problem on your own, and makes people more
inclined to try to help you. See also [What's this
netiquette?]

------------------------------

Subject: - Are there any good sources of example code?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

Bob Stout maintains a very large archive called SNIPPETS. For more
information see [What and where is SNIPPETS?].

------------------------------

Subject: - What and where is SNIPPETS?
Date: 6 Feb 2002 00:00:45 -0400

Excerpt from the SNIPPETS FAQ follows:

The SNIPPETS archive, maintained by Bob Stout, contains public
domain/freeware portable C/C++ source code & instructional text.
There are more than 500 files, including:

Approx. 56,000 lines of code + approx. 10,000 lines of
tutorials.
Approx. 30% PC-specific, 70% portable
Approx. 6% C++-specific, 94% C/C++

The PC-specific functions are system-level utility code - no
multimedia or GUI code. Tested on all popular PC compilers plus
Unix compilers where possible. An eclectic collection with
everything from macros to complete cut-and-paste C/C++ code
solutions & utilities, along with FAQ and instructional files.

Official SNIPPETS sites:


------------------------------

Subject: - Is the source code MS-DOS available?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

No, the source code to MS-DOS is not currently available; however, the
source code to an MS-DOS alternative known as FreeDOS is freely
available; see [What and where is FreeDOS?] for more
information.

------------------------------

Subject: - What are my alternatives for MS-DOS compatible OSes?
Date: 5 Feb 2002 22:03:03 -0400

The FreeDOS Project (see [What and where is FreeDOS?]) has
created an open source MS-DOS compatible operating system known as
FreeDOS. Additionly, IBM has released an updated version of their PC-DOS
known as PC-DOS 2000.

Lineo currently owns the rights to DR-DOS, but they appear to no longer
be developing or supporting it; however, one can still find DR-DOS and
even CP/M on their FTP site:

------------------------------

Subject: - What and where is FreeDOS?
Date: 7 Feb 2002 00:49:45 -0400

The FreeDOS Project creates and maintains FreeDOS an open source
operating system covered by the GNU General Public License. FreeDOS is a
functional operating system; however, they have not yet reached their
stated of goal of being able to run Windows and DOOM. The FreeDOS
Project has not accessed any Microsoft source code and is creating
FreeDOS from scratch.

More information and the FreeDOS distribution itself can be found at:


------------------------------

Subject: - Where can I find out about batch files?
Date: 7 Feb 2002 12:59:56 -0400

If the question is not answered elsewhere in this FAQ, it may be
answered in Timo Salmi's "Frequently Asked Questions about MS-DOS
batches." This list can be found at
.

------------------------------

Subject: Conclusion

This is the end of part 1 of 5 parts.

This text is copyright 2003 by Jeffrey Carlyle. All rights reserved.
Please see the top of this article for additional copyright information.