Hi,
> On Dec 26, 2021, at 5:32 AM, richardkolacz...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> I am investigating installing FreeDOS 1.3 RC5 as a bare metal installation
> (i.e. everything is on a 16 GByte USB stick) and will try to boot off the USB
> stick (i.e. the USB stick becomes the C:\ drive and so the hard drive with
> Windows 10x64 is not accessible).
>
> I have never used FreeDOS before - a while ago I experimented with a RUFUS
> formatted USB stick FAT32 and used same as a bare metal setup for DOS (and
> with some 30 year old 16 bit software and a special DOS version recent
> software package).
>
> A partial list of DOS-type files on the USB stick include HIMEM.exe
> UMBPCI.sys MEM.exe MORE.exe EMMEX.exe EMM386.exe XDVD2.sys RDISK.com and
> others (all are dated later than 2005).
>
> At this stage I wish to avoid say using (DOSbox and DOSbox-X) and Virtual
> Machine.
>
>
> From my experimenting with above I was happy to, from DOS environment, to
> actually access a 3200x1800 display (though I did end up with only about 240
> colors - not millions of colors). There were a number of issues I could not
> sort out with my previous bare metal configuration.
>
> The computer I am using has an INTEL i7 x64, 256 GByte PCIe SSD, 4TByte SSD,
> built-in DVD drive, 32 GByte RAM and 3200x1800 display. The computer is about
> 8 years old.
>
> If I understand correctly, all your releases are for actual installation on a
> hard drive - i.e. not for installation onto a USB BOOT stick. Because I had
> serious problems when I previously tried to have dual boot (Windows initially
> installed + LINUX later) - resulting in computer not being useable for 2
> weeks until I could finally completely re-install Windows + apps - I do not
> wish to install anything onto the hard drive (at this stage).
>
> Is it possible to have a zip file of the individual FreeDOS programs - so
> that I can copy same to my already FAT32 formatted USB stick (i.e. as a
> "parallel" DOS-type operating system)?
>
> I look forward to using FreeDOS, though I may be initially faced with various
> issues for my bare metal configuration requirements.
There is a way to install FreeDOS to a USB stick by only using a USB drive…
• Download FD13-FULL usb stick images.
• On a Unix, Linux or macOS use dd to write that image to the Flash
Drive. There should be a Windows equivalent to dd (I don’t know what it is).
The image should be written as-is and not stretched or modified by the program
writing it.
• Boot the Flash Drive and exit the installer.
• Use FDISK to manually create an additional partition on the USB stick
and reboot again.
• Use FDISK to identify the drive letter assigned to the new partition
and exit. (I will assume it is E:)
• Change directories to C:\FDOS-x86
• Run “setup E:\FREEDOS”
• (answer the prompts, and install FreeDOS)
• Reboot
There is a minor bug in the FloppyEdition installer that I just discovered
while doing this myself. Once the system reboots, there will be an error
loading the shell (COMMAND.COM). Until the next OS release, this is how you fix
it.
• type “C:\COMMAND.COM” and hit enter
• type “FREEDOS\BIN\EDIT FDCONFIG.SYS” and press enter
• there are two lines near the end that will have “/C:1024” change them
to “/E:1024”, save and exit.
• reboot
That should provide you with a BASE FreeDOS install. The original partition
will still be available and you can use FDIMPLES or another package manager to
add or remove different programs as needed.
There is a way to do something similar using the Primary Installer. However
depending on your hardware and BIOS, using the FloppyEdition installer is more
reliable.
:-)
Jerome
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