IT REALLY
WORKS!try it ↓
WORKS!try it ↓
AItem 24-1181
Click the screen and type. On a phone, use the keyboard button.
Click the screen and type. On a phone, use the keyboard button.
Before pictures and pointers you talked to a computer in writing. The prompt C:\> was the whole interface: a drive letter, the directory you were in, and a > that meant “your turn”. You typed a command, pressed Enter, and the machine typed back.
Floppy drives came first and took the letters A: and B:. Hard disks arrived later and got the next free letter, C:, which is why on many computers the main disk is still drive C.
File names had up to eight characters, a dot and a three-letter extension. The extension said what a file was: .EXE and .COM were programs, .BAT a list of commands, .TXT plain text. Extensions outlived the eight-letter limit by decades.
Text mode was thrifty. The screen was a grid of 80 by 25 cells, and each cell took two bytes: one for the character, one for its colours. A full screen fitted in 4,000 bytes, about as much as a single small icon takes today.