Hi Ron, > 1. Will it boot from a CD or DVD it was mentioned it would.
Yes it should boot if your PC is set to boot from CD or DVD. > Yes you did mention that it would boot from the CD but > what do you mean Live CD? Main purpose of our CD is to install DOS to harddisk. This is also the case for many Linux CD. We followed the example of Linux and use the name "Live CD" for DOS which lives on the CD and can be used on the CD, without having to install it to harddisk first. A Linux example is Knoppix, which became so popular that they later added the ability to install to disk. With FreeDOS, you do NOT have a LiveCD function in fdbasecd, but there is one in fdbasews and fdfullcd. This means that if you boot the fdbasecd (smallest) CD, there is only a minimal FreeDOS meant to install the rest to harddisk. But if you boot the larger CDs, there is a menu item where you can use a version of FreeDOS which is already installed on the CD itself, without having to install on harddisk. > > 2. when booting what files does it boot and where or the files > located like Autoexec bat config sys and so on and are these the > only ones FreeDos uses are there more. FreeDOS first looks for fdconfig sys. If it cannot find that, it uses config sys instead. The SHELL or SHELLHIGH line in there tells FreeDOS where your command com file is (for example the FreeCOM command com, or 4dos). This line can tell FreeCOM to use another file instead of the default autoexec bat. You also need the kernel sys file which is the kernel itself. Apart from that, you ONLY need those files which you want to load from (fd)config or autoexec (for example drivers) or which you want to use later (for example xcopy or games). > 3. what are the names of the files are they called autoexec bat > config sys and are these the only ones again I tried to find these > files on the CD I made and could not find them probably a personal > problem always is.<BG> You cannot find them on CD because DOS cannot boot directly from CD. The CD contains a diskette image and your BIOS boots that (in the easy case) or boots a special RAMDISK which in turn boots the image (in the FreeDOS 1.0 case). The FreeDOS 1.0 style uses the isolinux boot loader (which can load Linux kernels) and the MEMDISK RAMDISK (which can be loaded as if it would be a Linux kernel). The diskette image on our CD is 360k and is gzip packed. You cannot see the files on this virtual A: drive unless you do boot from the CD or use the proper tools to open the disk image. So you cannot see kernel, command, config or autoexec when you look at the CD from Windows, normally. > 4. If I know the above and if FreeDos will boot from a CD or DVD > I can fix the problem with some of the statements not working by > just removing them. You cannot do that in an easy way. But please read: http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?n=FdDocEn.FdInstall for a list of known problems with FreeDOS 1.0 and explanations on how to avoid them. You can always hit F8 when DOS starts to boot to be asked for each driver if you want to load it. Normally it should be enough to use the "HIMEM but no EMM386" boot option to get everything to work :-). > 5. After that I then can try and ask you guys why it wouldn't > recognize my hard drives and why it renamed the CD I booted from > as A and the floppy as C As said above, the A: drive is a virtual diskette. It is only visible when you booted from CD. However, the floppy should not be C:, it should be B: ...? If your harddrives are not visible, they are probably Windows NT (or 2000, 2003 or XP or Vista) file systems which cannot be used in DOS (or Windows 95, 98 or ME). You can load (free for personal use) drivers like NTFS4DOS to get some access to NT (NTFS) drives later. > In other words I can start to play with it. I have an old Dos 5 > manual so if FreeDos is like version 5 of Microsoft Dos version 5 > I will have a book I can use. FreeDOS is very similar to MS DOS 5, but several drivers work in another way and config sys menus work in another way. Please read the config.txt file which comes with the kernel download (and should be part of the CDs, at least in a zip somewhere). For the drivers, read the files which come with the drivers :-). Feel free to ask me off-list if you have questions. > rewritable CD so that I can change the autoexec bat and config sys As said - you cannot. If you have a diskette drive, things would be easier. But for changing the CD, you have to edit the virtual diskette on the CD, because the "normal CD" part of the CD cannot be used before DOS CD drivers like SHSUCDX (similar to MSCDEX) are loaded. Because those are loaded in config / autoexec, the config and autoexec must be on the virtual diskette, not in the "normal CD" part, sorry :-). Eric PS: It would be possible to make a "SYS" which can boot the FreeDOS kernel from CD, but then you still have the problem that the kernel cannot load SHSUCDX from CD because it needs SHSUCDX to access files on the CD. The kernel does not have to access itself as a file, it just "is" / it just lives in RAM working memory after the boot loader put it there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. 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