"what is the command to create a file?"

This question troubled me a lot few years ago! I had just started learning computers. It was the time when I had 8086/8088 based diskless machines running MS-DOS 3/4.

Every book I found mentioned that computers store stuff in files. "Everything is file", they said. It was difficult to understand this because we never created files back then!!

Why so?
Our teacher would...
 - Boot up the PC using a DOS bootable disk.
 - type CD BASIC
 - type GWBASIC (BASIC interpreter would start and then the bootable floppy would be removed)
 - We would happily type our "Hello World" codes, run and just turn off PC when done :D No hassles of saving code :D

Soon our DOS lessons started and then using "DIR" I could see that the bootable disk that we used contained two files and one directory - COMMAND.COM, GWBASIC.COM and BASIC. Phew! There were indeed files in computers.

Next command was "MD", yes, fnally it seems I was getting closer. "MD creates a directory. MF would create a file?", I asked myself and tried the command

A:> MF KIRAN
Bad command of filename (blah!)

I was surprised and broken :( No file for me :( I went to my teacher and asked him - "what is the command to create a file?". He couldn't understand my plight too and I couldn`t understand what he explained. My search of answer continued...

Years later, I met that teacher again on Facebook. I was really glad that he remembered me too.

Thankfully, I now know a little more about computer files than before :D

Are you fan of DXDIAG?

Whats the first (or one of the firsts) things that you do after installing a new instance of Windows?

I usually run DxDiag. Is this something that you too do?

Diagnostics utilities always amused me. It started with CheckIT for DOS which I ran on MS-DOS 3/4. My usual screen that time was MS-DOS prompt and then GW-BASIC interpreter. No wonder CheckIT caught my attention. It was something screenful and had lots of information - much more than I could interpret. I behaved exactly like Number 5 from the movie - Short Circuit. I ran around craving for "Input" most of the time then and diagnostics gave me that :)

Windows 95 came along and it took away most of the fun of running MS-DOS diags. But DxDiag was cool. Watching the DxDiag video test somehow became "the thing to do". Running it and watch the white rectangle and colourful cube jumping around the screen was quickest and coolest thing you could do on Windows, wasn't it? And it had quick MIDI test which rocked on my Creative AWE 64.

Sad to see DxDiag crippled in the Windows 7 RTM...no video tests in DxDiag  :( :( :(