Obsolete Commands

This document describes some commands that are obsolete, etc. FreeDOS does not support these commands.

append

Allows programs to open data files in the specified directories as though they were local to the working directory.

[Dropped, because the program was considered to be a "crutch" for legacy DOS-based applications as DOS moved to support directories. Append was used primarily to support programs that did not know about directories on a DOS system.]

fastopen

Decreases the amount of time needed to load files and programs.

[Dropped, because disk cache should be (eventually) implemented in the kernel, not by an external program. Also, Fastopen was originally created to increase DOS application performance on systems with slow drives, where today disk drives are much faster.]

graftabl

Load the graphics table for a specific code page.

[Dropped, because most monitors can display extended characters (128-255) without Graftabl. This command was originally introduced by MS-DOS to support the extended character set on systems that were not originally equipped to display them properly. While some users may miss this command, we feel there are not enough systems that still need Graftabl to justify its inclusion in the Spec.]

recover

Recover data from a bad diskette or hard disk.

[Dropped, because there are a variety of shareware and freeware disk recovery programs already avaialble, and it would be silly of us to write another one just because MS-DOS included a Recover command. If you need a disk recovery program, go download one, or purchase a third-party recovery program such as Norton's Utilities.]

setver

Set the DOS version that is reported to programs.

[Dropped, because this was a legacy migration thing, to allow programs that needed to run on a particular DOS version to be carried forward.]
Copyright © 1998 Jim Hall
This file is derived from the FreeDOS Spec Command HOWTO. See the file H2Cpying.txt for copying conditions.