One other thing you can try with VirtualBox (and Bochs, and QEMU, probably VMware Player) is use device pass through and install directly to the drive there using the VM (VirtualBox calls it raw access)[0][1]. The machine running the VM will likely be faster than your 486 and so the install should be faster. The only issue could be that FreeDOS FDISK detects LBA BIOS and put thats in boot sector partition type but I believe the kernel should be correctly handle that case and adjust its drive access routines accordingly when you replace the drive back in your 486.
Jeremy, Tom, Rugxulo might be able to correct me on that last point. Otherwise, like others have said, get the IDE drive mounted in Windows, Linux or OSX, without changing anything else, create a folder for the FreeDOS Installer Image and copy the entire file structure of the installer to it. [0] https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm7683 [1] http://wiki.qemu.org/download/qemu-doc.html#host_005fdrives On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Jerome Shidel <jer...@shidel.net> wrote: > > >> On Dec 30, 2016, at 11:44 AM, userbeit...@abwesend.de wrote: >> >> Hi, fellow FreeDOS users! I need your help. >> >> >> I have an original Intel 80486 with 50 MHz that I want to try FreeDOS >> on. I still haven't found the time so far an my first attempt came to an >> early halt because I couldn't get an installation media to start on this >> machine. >> >> >> *) The 486-PC doesn't have a CD-ROM drive. >> >> *) The 486-PC doesn't have USB. >> >> *) I cannot easily create a 3.5 inch boot floppy to use it in the 486-PC. >> >> >> What I can do thou is plug the IDE HDD into another PC and pre-load >> FreeDOS there. Then, connecting the IDE HDD inside the 486-PC, FreeDOS >> should start. >> >> >> The Question: >> >> 1) Does the installer check the hardware and make choices? If so, this >> would be totally wrong since I will be preloading it on a very different PC. > > Yes a little. Only to compensate for the different quirks in the common vm > platforms. > So, if you install to real hardware then stick the drive in the old machine, > you will be fine. > >> 2) Can I install something like the installation environment itself? > > Yes. > > If you have a spare drive laying around, you can just copy the intire > filesystem from one of the USB images to the root of that drive. Boot your > old Dos, switch to drive D: and run setup.bat > > This is how the DOSBox install works. Albeit it detects DOSBox and customized > the install process somewhat. > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmLjVYqF3zg&sns=em > >> 3) The outcome should be that it boots on the 486-PC and starts the >> installer from there, to create all necessary CONFIG.SYS and >> AUTOEXEC.BAT entries and to select the software to be installed. The >> installer files may remain as capacity is not a factor on this HDD anyhow. >> >> >> Has this been done before? And how would I do it? >> >> Help highly appreciated! >> >> >> Thanks, >> >> userbeitrag. >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most >> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot >> _______________________________________________ >> Freedos-user mailing list >> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most > engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
