How does one begin to use DOS

[Sean]

Hi, I am in giving away my old DOS based computer system, to a very nice friend of the family. It's an IBM Personal System/2 Model 50.  It has been so long since i have used it that i am not sure if there is something seriously wrong with the system or not.  When booted up the only thing that comes to screen are some numbers, which read:
301
8602

162.
I have no idea what that means, all that is expected of this machine is to use the wordperfect5.0 which is already pre-loaded.  Please point me in the right direction.   thanks

[johnwill]

Those are error codes from the BIOS, so I suspect the machine may not be all that healthy.  I don't have a reference, so I don't know what errors you are getting, but I suspect at least the CMOS battery is dead and you've lost the disk settings...

[MalikTous]

Your CMOS battery is flat, your keyboard is missing or defective, and you have a video problem. Replace the CMOS battery (should be an oddball-looking pair of cells clipped somewhere, yank 'em and rig appropriate D-cell alkalines with a series diode to match the voltage), plug a known good keyboard in, and reseat all the internal cards and connectors, then see if it will boot without errors.

This box may be able to run Windows 3.1 - if it is a 386 model. Otherwise you can use Windows 2 v286 for the 286 models. I'm assuming it still has a hard drive sized between 16MB and 40MB.

You can mount DOS v6.22 (for 386 model) or v3.31 (for 286). Include a file navigator like PFM or DesqView and a decent text edittor like E88 or TED, and an old DOS version of WordStar or WordPerfect.

[clayton]

I'm new at this also. Can anyone tell me how view my computers history?