ITSC 1305 − PC Operating Systems

Revised Chapter 03 Activities

Be sure you have read these preceding Announcements ~for background information:

Chapter 3 & 4 ~ Virtual Floppy Disks and Logistics
Chapter 3 Pre-Activities ~ Preparing your USB Flash Drive
Chapter 3 Download: ITSC1305_flashDrive.zip (51.3 MiB)

We will not be following the Chapter 03 Activities in the textbook.
Instead, we will learn the logistics (how-to) involved in using our newly loaded USB Flash Drives to work through, complete, and submit for grading our Chapter Activities.

Configuring the Command Prompt

Believe it or not, the “Command Prompt” / Command-Line Interface (CLI) as shipped with Microsoft Windows® is not configured properly for serious Command-Line work. After we 'open' our Command Prompt, We will follow a
4-Step configuration procedure to make our Command Prompt more flexible and easier to use.

Launch a “Command Prompt”/Command Line Interface (CLI) by either:
1. click Start, Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt [Enter] or
2. click Start, type CMD [Enter].
What you are seeing is a very plain, text only, (the original), computer-human interface called by many names …
- “Command Prompt”
- “MSDOS” or just “DOS Prompt”
- “Command Line Interface (CLI)
- Console or Terminal
The no-frills “Command Prompt” at first looks like is does not have a
Menu Bar, but does have a somewhat hidden one …
- Right-click on an unused area on the (usually blue) ‘Title Bar’ …
- From the ‘context menu’ select Properties.
What you are seeing now is technically called a ‘tabbed Dialog Box’.
Note the 4 Tabs (or 5 if you have the latest edition of Windows 10/11):
1. Options
2. Font
3. Layout
4. Colors

To configure our Command Prompt to be more flexible and easier to use, we make one (1) configuration adjustment for/in each of the 4 Tabs.

4-Step Command Prompt adjustment

Options Tab
- Click on the Options Tab
- Look for the section titled: ‘Edit Options’
- Check (enable) the option: ‘QuickEdit Mode’
- Important Note: If QuickEdit Mode is not enabled, you will not be able to use your mouse to select / highlight / copy text from the Command Prompt window.
Font Tab
- Click on the Font Tab
- Since your Command Prompt screen/window is a grid, 80 characters wide, by 25 lines high ~it is mandatory that the Font chosen is monospace (e.g. all characters are the same width). The two best monospace fonts for the job are: “Consolas” and “Lucida Console”, although “Courier New” (very ugly) and “Lucida Sans Typewriter” will also work.
  - For now, lets keep things simple and choose “Consolas” as our monospace console Font.
- The Size of your on-screen font is measured in “points”. There are 72 “points” per inch. Selecting a font Size of 24 points is a good starting choice for most of today’s ultra-high resolution monitors.
  - With a fixed character size screen, (80x25), The choice of Font and Size indirectly control the overall visual Screen Size.
Layout Tab
- Click on the Layout Tab
- The ‘Screen buffer size’ settings do not control the screen size, instead they control the memory reserved for the scroll back buffer. (The memory where lines that scroll off the the top of the screen are written and remembered for later.)
  - A Width: of 80 is correct as it matches the actual screen width. But, the default Height: of a 300 byte/character buffer is way, way to small to even be partially useful.
  - We need a much larger buffer Height:, a good choice is 8192 (giving an 8-Kilobyte scroll-back buffer.)
- The ‘Window Size’ settings control the number of characters on our Command Prompt screen. We want make sure we stick with the default/standard text screen Window Size of Width: 80 characters by Height: 25 lines. This way, your screen will match closer to the screen outputs shown in the textbook.
Colors Tab (optional)
- Click on the Colors Tab
- In this tab we can set the text screen background color and foreground color. With (•) Screen Background selected, be sure the color is set to Black, e.g. Red [0], Green [0], Blue [0]
- Now select (•) Screen Text. The factory default text foreground color is Silver. This is unfortunate because the color
  Silver
  Red [192], Green [192], Blue [192] on Black is just below the contrast and brightness levels our eye physiology prefers. Using this color combination over long periods of time will make your eye lids feel like lead and make you feel sleepy. It’s only just a little below though, changing any one or more of the three primary colors to the next level 224 fixes the eye strain problem.
  - Changing the Red setting to [224], gives you a slight tint of
    
    dusty rose
  - Changing the Green setting to [224], gives you a slight tint of
    
    mint
  - Changing the Blue setting to [224], gives you a slight tint of
    
    azure

Logistics (two Windows at once!)

Now that we have a Command Prompt window open and configured, to do our Activities, let’s open a second Window.

click Start, type Notepad [Enter].

All of the Activities within each individual Chapter, will be submitted as a single text document. You will submit eight (8) primary Chapter Activity text documents (e.g. Chapters 04 through 12). Every assignment submission will be named using a standard filename convention for example:

ITSC1305_mpharris−A3.txt

This naming convention consist of four (4) parts.

Our course prefix of ITSC1305 followed by an underscore/underline e.g. ITSC1305_
Your Canvas login name (not mine as shown) followed by a dash
e.g. mpharris−
A short assignment identifier, for example:
A3 for Activity 03, A4 for Activity 04, T1 for Linux Tutorial 01,
P1 for Practicum 1, etc.
And last, the extension .txt for a text-file.

Since we are starting a new assignment, Chapter 03 Activities,
let’s create a new text document.

We should already have Notepad open with a blank page …
if not… click Start, type notepad [Enter].
On the top line, type in some sort of identifying header. I’m not real picky here, include your name, filename (see above), date, etc.
Now from the Menu Bar select File, Save As…
1. Navigate to the logical drive letter of your Flash Drive,
2. then navigate to the \Homework subdirectory,
3. then type in the naming convention filename.txt we just discussed.
From now on, as we work through all the Activities within the same Chapter, we will just use: File, Save to update (save more of) our assignment work. We only use: File, Save As… at the beginning of an assignment to create a new file.

So how is this all going to work? (e.g. or come together?)

You will start reading through an assigned Chapter or Tutorial. As you are reading, you will come across lab Activities embedded in the reading. The Activities will have commands to type in, that will be in Bold type. The screen prompts (which you do not type) will not be in bold.

Check if your screen prompt (ex. I:\Data> ) in your Command Prompt window matches (with substitutions) the prompt shown in the textbook Activity. Then type the command/commands shown in the Activity.

To save and show your work (to turn-in), you will Select and Copy the:

prompt,
command you typed, and
the output generated

from the Command Prompt window ~into the invisible clipboard.

You will then Paste what you copied from the Command Prompt window, into the Notepad or Notepad++ window. You will select File, Save (or type [Ctrl]+S) ~every time you Paste, to save your work.

It is your completed Notepad or Notepad++ textfile from a Chapter Activity or other assignment, that you will upload/submit to get a grade for a specific lab assignment.

So what is the catch?

The only catch, if there is one, is that the user interface commands to do things like Select (Mark), Cut ([Ctrl]+X), Copy, ([Ctrl]+C) and Paste (Insert) ([Ctrl]+V) are different between a modern Windows® Graphical User Interface (GUI) used by Notepad and Notepad++, etc. ~versus the text-based Command-Line Interface (CLI) of your Command Prompt.

When you use your mouse to ‘highlight’ text, this is the editing command Select. What differs in a CLI window, is that you must highlight a rectangle (e.g. from upper-left to lower-right, or vise versa).
Remember: You cannot ‘highlight’/Select text in your Command Prompt window, unless ‘QuickEdit Mode’ is enabled.
Once you ‘highlight’/Select text in your Command Prompt window, you
Copy that text into the clipboard by … Wait-for-it… pressing [Enter].
You know the text has been Copied because the ‘highlight’ goes away.
You can then Pastethe Copied text intoNotepad or Notepad++ by:
Edit, Paste from the Menu Bar (or type [Ctrl]+V)
Be sure to press [Enter] twice after Pasting into Notepad or Notepad++.

Chapter 03 Activities Content

Now that we finally got through all the background and logistics of ‘how‘ to work through, edit, Save, and upload/submit our lab Activities; what are the actual Chapter 03 Activities?

Be sure to Copy and Paste into Notepad or Notepad++:

each prompt,
command you typed, and
the output generated

from the Command Prompt window.

Plug-in your USB Flash Drive and use File Explorer to identify the logical drive letter assigned to your mounted drive. I will use F: to refer to your Flash Drive, adjust accordingly.
In a newly opened Command Prompt window, you will see the prompt:
- C:\Users\yourCanvasLoginName>
This is your home directory on drive C:.
Change the current active drive to your Flash Drive by typing F: [Enter]
(Substitute your actual Flash Drive letter.)
From the ‘root‘ directory on your Flash Drive F:>_ type Go [Enter].

This will create the three virtual Floppy Drives. Your screen will clear, and you will see the acknowledgment messages on your screen. If you get the warning messages “Drive already SUBSTed” This is just a warning message telling you that the command Go has already been entered.
Now we can enter a series of commands to see (and save) the output they generate. Try these commands:
1. DIR [Enter]
2. DIR /W [Enter]
3. DIR /D [Enter]
4. DIR /X [Enter]
5. DIR /-N [Enter]
6. DIR /S [Enter]
7. DIR /? [Enter]
8. TREE [Enter]
9. TREE /A [Enter]
10. TREE /F [Enter]
11. Bye [Enter]
12. exit [Enter]
The last two commands removed the three virtual Floppy Drives and properly closed the Command Prompt window.

Your Notepad or Notepad++ text-file F:\Homework\ITSC1305_yourCanvasName−A3.txt should contain screen copies of all the commands and the outputs generated.

Now go to the Assignments link on our Canvas home page and Select REVISED: Chapter 03 Activities, and upload/submit your Assignment for grading using the [Submit Assignment] button.

~Prof. ℳichael ℘. ℋarris