text/11/6
   Like anybody waking up, it is
hungry. But the computer hungers
for more information. It checks to
see if a bootable disk is in drive
A:.  If not, it looks for a hard
disk with system files.


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text/11/61
   A bootable disk is one that
contains "system files." These
three are MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS and
COMMAND.COM.  You might have seen
COMMAND.COM on some of your
floppies, but the other two are
usually hidden on a bootable disk.
They are there, but you don't see
them when you type "dir."
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text/12/142
   The computer then reads these
three files.  They tell it all
about becoming a real computer.
Once it reads these files, it knows
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text/347/6
how to run programs.
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text/345/15
    Just like when you read a
book, the computer puts this
information in short-term
memory. On a computer, this is
the RAM. These are several I.C.
chips that can hold hundreds of
thousands of individual bytes.
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text/343/79
   Next, the computer will look
for files called AUTOEXEC.BAT
and CONFIG.SYS on the bootable
disk. These are special files
in which the user can write
instructions to tell the
computer to automatically load
chosen programs.  If no
AUTOEXEC.BAT file is found,
the computer asks about the
date and time.










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