In 1985, Computer Knowledge prepared a basic tutorial about microcomputers and DOS. The exercise was to help students and to help me learn programming. The first goal was somewhat successful; the second, not so much as I look back on the code. 🙂
One of my ultimate goals is to recreate that tutorial in different form and updated to today’s technology. But, in the process, I thought it might be of interest to see the original. I picked the 1991 version as one of the last versions in the original format.
The original was a DOS-based program that displayed text-only pages, one page at a time. You could navigate the pages and at times the program would ask questions and expect an answer.
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When started, the program would go through a setup routine and asked if you wanted to view the text in color or monochrome and if you wanted sound or not. The sound was just simple beeps; nothing fancy. |
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You were then presented with the tutorial’s main menu. There were nine different choices plus zero to exit the program. The choices are duplicated below and each will take you to a page where you can browse a gallery of screen shots for that topic. Enjoy… |
TUTOR.COM Main Menu
- Tutorial which explains TUTOR.COM (version 4.5).
- A description of the expanded keyboard.
- Brief history of computers.
- Introduction to computers, binary numbers, and the CPU.
- Introduction to storage and input/output devices.
- Disk Operating System operation and commands.
- A tutorial on subdirectory structure and commands.
- Batch file commands and structure explained.
- A brief introduction to structured programming.
Additionally, you could start the program with the parameter OLDKEY and this would cause the #2 keyboard tutorial to switch from the expanded keyboard to the original IBM-style keyboard. That one is here…