Thomas, The intermediate step is because you cannot SYS a: from a disk in A: to a disk in A:, i.e., create a boot disk on the disk in the floppy drive from the disk in the floppy drive although I believe that there are some routines available to do that. (You may even have to copy SYS.COM to the root directory of the logical drive.) I was under the impression that the complaint was that floppies on which there was another version of DOS would not boot. If the floppy OS is the same as the OS on the HD, then just doing a SYS a: from the default (boot) drive of your HD would put the appropriate system files on the floppy.
I suggested using a logical drive so that there would be no possibility of copying the wrong system files to the floppy nor overwriting the system files for the OS on the HD with system files from another DOS. Roger Turk Tucson, Arizona Thomas Mueller wrote: --------------Begin Quote-------------- > Am I wrong in my understanding of DOS that the files needed to create a boot > disk (MSDOS\PCDOS, IO.SYS/IBMIO.SYS, COMMAND.COM) are *always* files on the > DOS disk, but, except for COMMAND.COM, are hidden/system files? Could you > not create a boot disk by copying these files (removing the hidden/system > attributes first) to the root directory of a particular logical drive on your > HD, going to that root directory, and doing a SYS a:? > Roger Turk > Tucson, Arizona What is the purpose of the intermediate step of copying the hidden/system files to the root directory of a logical drive? You can do SYS a: from C: assuming C: is your boot drive. But you can only make a boot diskette for the same DOS version you booted, not for any other DOS version. ---------------End Quote------------------
