[Freedos-user] FD13 floppy installation attempts
First of all, I think FreeDOS is an outstanding replacement for the
discontinued MS-DOS!!!
I've been a happy camper & been a big fan of FreeDOS since v1.1. I use
it mainly on my 'ancient' PC. This PC has been around since the late
1990s. I built it myself. It has an Intel Pentium III 450mhz CPU on an
Asus P3b-F motherboard with one 256kb DIMM for RAM & VGA graphics on an
AGP-4x video card (I think it's an NVIDIA 6200 GPU???).
I usually use Linux (Ubuntu 20.04). It's on another OLD, but not quite
as old PC, (about 10 years old) ... I've become a big fan of freeware!
My 3rd PC (about the same age as the Linux PC) has Win 10 on it. I
rarely use it anymore especially with the Win 11 release. ("I seen the
writing on the wall" with Win11)
I've recently wanted to upgrade my oldest PC as much as I could which
includes going from FreeDOS 1.1 to FreeDOS 1.3. I dowloaded the
packages that I thought I needed.
I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure this oldest PC of mine won't
boot from a CD. So I extracted the legacy ZIP which contained a floppy
boot image & a CD ISO file. I then tried to extract the floppy IMG file
to a new-never-used 1.44 mb floppy in hopes to later create a boot
floppy in Ubuntu, but I couldn't even get that far because the floppy
image file wouldn't fit on the new 1.44mb floppy. I then tried using the
DVD drive to put the floppy IMG file on it but, writing to the DVD drive
in a DOS environment won't work (at least not with my limited knowledge)...
So now I'm stuck & don't know what else I can do. :(
Any suggestions/help???
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[Freedos-user] Error reading some CDs of known good disks… Re: Ralf Quint AUG 19,2017
First of all, Ralf, thanks for all the great help! I ended up using CDBurnerXP first & it worked superbly!:) - don't use Windows build-in CD burning tool. It simply s**ks. Although I agree, especially after using CDBurnerXP.I spent some time figuring-out how to use the built-in Windows Burner and finally got fairly comfortable using it & it did work as it is supposed to on my Win 7 PC, just not on the FD PC.I'm not 100% sure but, I'm thinking it was a LFN (Long File Name) issue. Use a proper burning tool instead, Each one of those is free and light years better than using Windows build-in burner, as you have tons of options to actually control what you are doing (see below) For sure… - make sure you use a CD-R media, not a CD-RW media. Although I don't know all the specifics, I do know that I use "Memorex" CDRs. I usually shun away from oddball brands (learned that lesson the hard way). The FD PC has an HP 52r with an older IDE I/F.It's set as master on the secondary IDE controller. Also the quality of the media might be a factor You had me worried there till after CDBurnerXPwas a success! - make sure to use a (very) low speed setting I'm not 100% convinced about using a lower write speed, but I ended up using 10x anyway.Even at that low speed, the burn time was just under 2 min. - make sure that the disc you burn is "finalized". I did. Ralf You're awesome! Thanx again! PS: The easiest way to download above mentioned tools without any hassle or unwanted fluff Sure enough an important consideration for me.I ended up using ninite.com & bookmarked it right away in my browser (Google Chrome). -- 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
[Freedos-user] Error reading some CDs of known good disks…
Hi all! I'm having a problem reading Cds in FD (1.2, now) that I created (burned) on my Win 7 PC. I don't understand why. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but what I'm doing wrong, I have no idea, hope someone can clue me as I'm completely clueless… Here's what I did: * On my Win 7 PC, I made a FreeDOS folder in my dedicated Downloads\otherfolder. * I downloaded a bunch of files into this folder from the FD site. (Making a mini-repository) (Even though there were a "bunch" of files, the total space used was only 57mb.) * I burned a CD of this folder onto a blank CD. (using Win explorer) * In Win Explorer, I chose the option to create a CD that would be readable in other CD drives VS. formatting a CD so as to make the CD act like a USB drive. (I believed this to be the correct choice) * I tested this CD , again using Win explorer, in Win 7. It tested as good. * When I load this CD into my FD PC, I get the error were I can R)etry, F)ail, or A)bort. * When I load a commercially created CD, (either it came with some hardware or it was purchased) the CD is read just fine in FD. Again, I'm baffled as to why this is happening... Thanx for your help with this. -- 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
Re: [Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2 RE: to Jerome Shidel AUG 15, 2017
That only supports UHCI-type controllers. So USB is not well supported under DOS (due to heavy complexity). Boo Hiss. Figures. Although some (modern?) BIOSes can treat a jump drive as hard disk (but you can't hotswap / add+remove them, you have to reboot). Your PIII might not be new enough for that support, dunno. I'm pretty sure not… It's not a big deal though (especially since that PC is not my sole PC) if USB isn't supported in FD, as long as the optical drive works, which it does, thankfully. Sure, a working USB port would be nice, but since it doesn't seem to be an option, no biggie. (Stating the obvious: you may wish to try Linux [old ZipSlack? TinyCore? antiX?] or FreeBSD or similar for better USB access. I already have another PC with Linux Mint installed on a much more modern BIOS (about 2 years old). USB on it works well (of course, its USB 2.0). My PIII PC is simply a leftover PC that I resurrected from the closet & no longer used to put FD 1.1 on it as a way to be able to use the tons of Floppy software on it that I had on HD 3.5s.(I ran a BBS for about 10 years (until 1996) and amassed quite a collection of floppies.I even have some very old 360KB 5.25" floppies). Those were mostly from my pre-HD era.:) Dual booting shouldn't be too hard.) Not really, but that's something I usually don't consider.Nothing against it, it's just not for me unless, of course, it's a have-to case. -- 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
[Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2 RE: to Rugxulo AUG 12, 2017
/If you are just browsing packages. It is far better to look at the package “group” pages. Like the Utilities Group page,/ // Agreed, it is easier, at least, for me it was.That is what I used, I didn't even know about the complete listing when I browsed the group listings.:) Those are some FreeDOS kernel version numbers. The current version is 2042. Got it, thanx. That's basically what I did.'Fraid I don't even know what "JEMM" is. Thanx for the link, I D/Led JEMM. It sounds great! There are software development and programing language packages available. They are some of the tools that can be used to create DOS software. Never heard of such, well, maybe vaguely.Makes sense now, though.The only programming I ever done in DOS was with bat files. It may not have locked-up, the progress bar can stop for several minutes. Oops, although I did wait several minutes & I may have neglected to look at the disk activity LED, I still may should've waited longer??? I didn't know the backup process was prone to long periods of seemingly inactivity… The standard backup process in normal mode uses several xcopy and copy commands. There many different things that could cause an issue during the process. Agreed, but I wouldn't think that just copy and xcopy would cause a lock-up, though cat is generally used to send the contents of a file (or device) to stdout. Good to know.But, why mention such in a FreeDOS environment? Seems like I remember seeing it in Linux??? There is some support for USB devices in the util/usbdos packages. But, I’ve never messed with it and don’t know what things it supports. Got it, hopefully there will be something that I can use. Thanx for all the help & useful links! -- 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
[Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2 RE: to Rugxulo AUG 12, 2017
(I know it's the same thing, but it's easier to me to only have to look in Sound for relevant sound/music tools than scroll through a list of hundreds of programs, even if sorted / ordered.) For me too, in fact I used that very same software listing that your link provides to build my own repo on my mainWin 7 PC in hopes to transfer them all to the FD PC via a USB Flash Drive.Now though, it looks like I'll have to resort to using optical drives instead. So, obviously, kernel and shell are supremely important, but the changes were minor (2040 -> 2042) or even non-existent (FreeCOM). Sorry, but I don't know what you mean by(2040 -> 2042) … I wouldn't recommend to overload yourself with worries about updating literally everything. I dislike having a billion files that are all falsely considered "important". I agree with that, trouble is, I'm not sure what's important or what may become important eventually.So, for me, it's easier & quicker to just do it all (I guess you could call that the "hoarder" approach):) I would suggest focusing only on your most commonly used utils and system drivers (e.g. JEMM). That's basically what I did.'Fraid I don't even know what "JEMM" is. Honestly, a lot of stuff hasn't seen major changes. That's what I've come to the conclusion of too, just wasn't sure if that was the case given the amount of time that's occurred between my initial 1.1 install and now. And for things like compilers (e.g. FPC), the upgrade path is usually to delete and reinstall from scratch anyways. Compilers?In an OS?Way beyond me!:)I thought compilers were only used in programming languages, like Pascal, C++, assembly etc.… (???) Yes, always have backups, if possible, but I don't think you need to backup literally everything. Well, I wanted to err on the side of caution (given my luck)so I tried to do the FD install backup, but for some unknown reason, the backup failed, the machine seemed to lock-up.Upon rebooting, I re-started the install W/O the backup option & had success that way. I guess you could always cat or dd from atop *nix the relevant partition into a .img file. cat or dd ??Is that the same as "DIR"? (Sorry, you lost me here.) Or, for Windows, use something like this: Thanx, I ended up using a different util though to produce a boot-able CD from a FDOS 1.2 *.iso file. take up a ton of space but are also quickly updated / obsoleted, so it's not worth preserving them to backup, IMHO, without a good reason.) Again, for me, difficult to determine what is & what's not important.Space, for me, on that PC is not relevant. Is this an ancient machine? Not ancient, but old! It's a Pentium III/733mhz, Floppy drive, CD/DVD optical drive, 30gb HD, 4gb RAM, AGP video card (not sure what speed & how much vid RAM), & the USB ports (all 2 of 'em) aren't compatible, evidently, with my other networked PCs (I think, but not sure, it's a USB 1.1 vs. a USB 2.0 issue. Or it could be FAT 16 vs FAT 32, again, not sure.For now though, while I determine the issue, I'll be using the optical drives for any DATA transfers.. Why can't he backup to USB jump drive instead? Isn't USB 1.1 & 2.0 supposed to be compatible?My 2.0 flash drive wasn't recognized on my FD 1.1 USB PC.Is there a util that can list available drives like in in Win & in Linux? A good boot floppy can be useful, I'm not disagreeing.But overall it's a very limited medium for backups. Agreed, but that's what I ended-up using. (a boot-able Floppy with my version of *.bat & *.sys files.) -- 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
[Freedos-user] (Upgrade FD 1.1 to FD 1.2) RE to Jerome on AUG 10, 2013
/Jerome said:/
Take a look at the software comparison chart on the official FreeDOS
software repository.
I looked at the rather extensive chart (thanx, BTW.) I was hoping you
could clear-up a little bit of confusion on my part… The chart consists
of several columns which I understand clearly except for that last
"FreeDOS" column. I'm not sure what its significance is.Although, it's
plain to see that it's not, it seems to be the same as the previous
column ("1.2-Extra".)
/Jerome said:/
Since you probably don’t have a supported NIC in the dedicated machine
Nope, although I would like to add this PC to my wireless & wired
network, but I wasn't sure how-to do so. The other PCs on my network
consists of 4 Win 7 PCs (2 of which are LapTops), 1 Linux Mint PC (as a
learning project), 1 Win 10 Laptop/tablet 2in1 combo, 2 Android devices,
1 Nintendo WII game system (seldom used anymore), & 2 wirelessly
connected HP printers.Can you recommend a compatible NIC?
/Jerome said:/
The FreeDOS 1.2 installer will back up your config files.
Good to know.Just what I was hoping, but didn't know.
/Jerome said:/
Also, if the new system directory (C:\FDOS), already exists, it will
also backup and replace it. So, make sure you have plenty of free disk
space.
If I remember correctly, Free Space is not a problem, at least not
yet!:)I'll rename the 1.1 FreeDOS Dir to "FDOS", I think I named
it"FreeDOS" initially…
/Jerome said:/
I highly recommend you create your own backup of anything important.
Good advice!I THINK I already did this, but it's been many years ago
since I created that system and I'm not real sure.Oh well, I have plenty
of old floppies, if they're needed!:)
/Jerome said:/
But, you never know. On top of that, a hard drive can go bad or even
completely fail without warning.
Don't I know it!(I've had more-than my share of HD woes)… Back in the
old days, my nickname was "HD Killer"!:)Since then, I've developed more
precautionary habits, although, a few more such habits wouldn't hurt.:)
Thanx for all the invaluable help, Jerome.
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[Freedos-user] upgrade my PC from FD 1.1 to FD 1.2
I have a dedicated PC with FD 1.1 installed on it.I would like to upgrade this PC to FD 1.2 without losing any existing folders or root Dir files (start-ups, etc…) Though, I've spent several hours looking on how to do this, I've yet to find anything… I'm currently primarily a Windows user, though I started using PCs with MS-DOS many years ago (first OS was MS-DOS version 3.2!). I finally gave-in to using Win (very reluctantly) way back in 1995. Can anyone advise an aged ex-DOS-user? BTW, my old 1.1 installation works fine, I mostly only use it for running old MS-DOS games. 1.1 has run most all my old stuff surprisingly well. The few that didn't run, I don't know if it is because of a graphics issue (most likely) or a 1.1 issue. I didn't know if the 1.2 upgrade would fix some of these issues. I know it would be easier to just forego any kind of upgrade, but... -- 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
[Freedos-user] FDOS How-to basics
intel undi pxe is the preload execution environment (p.x.e.) that allows your computer to boot off ethernet network: a network boot. I dismissed a NW boot since there's another different NetWork boot option. I think it's the one you'd use for a boot ROM on a NIC? Either way, thanks for the insight! -- AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform delivers complete security visibility with the essential security capabilities. Easily and efficiently configure, manage, and operate all of your security controls from a single console and one unified framework. Download a free trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/alienvault_d2d___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDOS How-to basics
From: e.a...@jpberlin.de Another nice DOS mainboard is the Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 rev 3.1: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3786#ov Looked at it, nice! PS/2 (just one, fits keyboard or mouse). In short, you can use this to make a modern PC which still connects to a lot of good old hardware that you may have from DOS times, if necessary :-) The board I ended up with is a Gigabyte board, but not that one. I'm happy with my board even though it lacks a floppy controller, it does have an IDE controller that allowed me to use an older CDR drive. I needed a board that fit these requirements: under $60, AM3 Socket, accommodate DDR3 RAM that I had ordered with the defective returned ASrock board, accommodate the CPU that I had ordered previously, and most importantly, sold by NewEgg.com (financial reasons). PS: You can plug 20 PCIe lanes, 16 for the main (graphics card) PCIe x16 slot, 4 shared between the two x1 slots and the second PCIe x16 (mechanically x16, electrically max x4) slot, which is still fine for e.g. a fast net/disk controller or SSD card. What do you mean by lanes? -- AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform delivers complete security visibility with the essential security capabilities. Easily and efficiently configure, manage, and operate all of your security controls from a single console and one unified framework. Download a free trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/alienvault_d2d___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDOS basic how-to questions
From: e.a...@jpberlin.de Hi Pierre :-) As somebody already replied, you could make a bootable USB stick with DOS. Yes, but how? I don't know how since the flash drive isn't accessible on my FDOS PC. Then the BIOS will play the driver for DOS. ? Note that you cannot plug the stick in or out after booting in that case. I gathered that much... Sometimes the BIOS even makes USB disks visible as harddisks if you do NOT boot from them. But you still have to reboot whenever you plug another stick, I think. Sounds right. The other option is to use USB drivers for DOS. At the moment, the Bret Johnson drivers ( http://bretjohnson.us/ ) are a common choice, as they are free and open. I went to that site. I D/L the all file, which seemed cool to me, since it wasn't that big (~400k) 2ut I didn't see any file/utils that would apply to my USB FD (flash drive) Boot/access ordeal. There are also shareware DOS drivers, even with USB 3.0 high speed support, by Georg Potthast ( http://www.georgpotthast.de/usb/ ) which only work for a while after each boot until you register them. Both drivers have the limitation that not all mainboards / chipsets are supported. You can also download a number of older, commercial drivers, which usually came with some hardware but often also work with other. Good to know, thanx. Burning files to CD / DVD / BluRay is hard in DOS, because you need stronger drivers for your (e.g. ATAPI or SATA) drive. Some people have collected commercial drivers which you could use with DOSCDROAST or similar toolkits, with the same problem as using old commercial DOS USB disk drivers. The problem being they're not FREE? If you find a safe way of using USB sticks, that is probably the solution with less headache. Memory cards such as SD in USB readers also count as USB stick in that sense, and might actually respect the write-protect tab on the card for you. Built-in card readers may or may not behave as USB readers. Right. Note that you can even plug CF memory cards to IDE connectors with simple mechanical adapters. Every operating system and BIOS should accept them as harddisk replacement that way, of course again without the ability to plug them in or out while DOS is running. Hmmm, I don't see this as a working solution. Nevertheless, good to know. Note that speed of all sorts of flash sticks or cards is bad in typical DOS use, because DOS does not pool writes and does not usually read-ahead. The latter can be fixed by loading lbacache with the tickle tool. Or you can load uide which is a very big cache. Both only work for BIOS supported drives, they will not notice drives connected with separate drivers. I'm banking on any FD, even in DOS, is at least faster than floppies. Is that not the case? I'm hoping so, but even if not, the capacity advantage more than compensates for any lack of speed, to me anyway. Neither will pool writes, though. Because flash storage is often low in writes per second, you get slow writes with DOS. Other operating systems do few-but-big writes. If your disk is SSD, you can forget most of those but items, SSD are flash disks which are very fast even with bad drivers. I do use an SSD, but not in my FDOS PC. Regards, Eric Thanx for all the valued info! -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDOS basic how-to questions
From: rugx...@gmail.com Hi, Almost none of them have it pre-installed these days. I bought a Sony USB-hosted floppy drive, and it works (in DOS), but I've not used it a lot lately. I have one too, but mine isn't a Sony drive. I think mine is a Dell laptop drive. I forget where I ordered it from, but in their descriptions, they touted the Dell drive's reliability which surprised me, but so far, so good. I was able to use clear packing tape to mount it inside an old aluminum HD cooler that I had lying around. It does work in Win. I haven't tried it in DOS. I use it in Win for quick-formatting the myriads of 1.44s I have. Yes, old machines are more than adequate for most DOS stuff (and sometimes better, due to more compatible hardware). I agree with that 100%! Apparently the damn stupid universal serial bus (USB) has various versions and host controllers or whatnot. UHCI is one of them, supported by Intel and VIA motherboards, I gather. Unfortunately, some computers (like this Lenovo desktop) don't support it, only other stuff (EHCI). Blech. Yesterday, I read a little about that USB 'junk'. I quickly realized how big a mess it was! Typical of Intel to try set a standard in hopes that it would stick or take-off again. They did have some successes such as the PCI bus others, though. They also had failures, though. RAMBUS comes to my mind. That reason and a couple others is why I'm now in the AMD camp. :) BTW, in trying to get the FD (flash drive) going, I tried setting it to be the first boot device. Currently, the first boot device is the CDR, #2 is the floppy, then the HD is #3. I have #4 set to disabled. FDOS is perfectly happy with this set-up. I knew I needed to add the flash drive as #1, if I wanted to boot from it. I assumed the following choice was for USB, but wasn't sure. Any clues on this: Intel UNDI, PXE-1.0 (build dev.) I haven't the foggiest idea as to what that is, do you? When I tried it as the #1 boot device, I got a non-system disk error to check cabling... After that, I gave-up and set all my boot devices back the way they were. I get it, floppies are small, slow, and error-prone. They're not perfect. I don't expect anybody to want to use floppies, but ... it's so much harder to get USB support on non-mainstream OSes. You can say that again! :) USB is just too complicated, but since everybody only uses Linux, Windows, ... then nobody cares about complexity nor requirements of anybody else. Yes, I'm following you there. I chalk it all up to mainstream marketing. IOW, if we can't make big bucks on it, we'll have to drop it:) It's definitely a headache, at least for me. Maybe some others here (Ulrich, Mike B.) can give hints, if you're curious. I kinda doubt it to be a worthwhile project. There are just a few documents text files that I would've liked to have... I figure that I've been without them for this long... It's just one of those things where it'd be nice, but there's not a dire need. I have to try to make it work, though. Go for the flash drive. For me, RUFUS works well, so I can't complain (too hard) about lack of floppy support. I'll try it. I haven't had too much luck with RMprepUSB anyways. Sure, compared to floppies, it's fine. But I'm not sure long-term storage is a realistic goal. Mainly because I've heard (but can't prove) that CD-Rs don't last but about 5-7 years anyways. That's tough to hear. I was under the assumption that they're ultra-reliable since they're not affected by magnetic fading or magnetic fields. Not to mention the lack of physical contact with the drive hardware. I thought CDs were pretty much indestructible... -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] FDOS basic how-to questions
From: bblaauw@home.nlRugxulo schreef op 8-5-2013 23:16: Something like this still has some legacy controllers/connectors/headers: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20Z77%20Professional/?cat=Specifications I bought an ASROCK MB that had a floppy controller on it, but I had to return it as a defectiveunit. I may be wrong, but I swore off that brand becasuse of that ordeal. Yes the OHCI versus UHCI (both USB1.1) battle isn't much fun if all you want is a working controller. EHCI (USB2.0) is more universal, just like xHCI (USB3.0). Generic drivers are nearly always non-existing though, especially floppy and CD drivers. Thanx, good to know... Let's not even start talking about how bootable FireWire interface is on computers, compared to Apple. Glad that Thunderbolt is taking over for (bootable) highspeed external devices. Bernd LOL! :) -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos-user Digest, Vol 783, Issue 1
From: bbla...@home.nl Partition format it as FAT32 with Windows tools like RUFUS or RMprepUSB. Then boot from this bootable USB Flash Drive. That's about all the legacy emulation a BIOS will do. Booting from harddisk/floppy then trying to get access to USB Flash Drives is troublesome due to lack of the BIOS emulation (only provided for the booted drive) as well as DOS drivers for USB/SCSI/FireWire controllers. OK, that makes sense. Then I guess if I booted from one flash drive with 2 separate flash drives installed, the 2nd flash drive wouldn't be accessible? I'm just trying to understand all of this USB with DOS stuff. If you're able to find an ASPI driver, then MKISOFS or CDRKIT can do the burning. Usually this means creating a new disk image (ISO file) then writing that to CD. I'm assuming your CD drive is connected to IDE or SATA controller. If not you're out of luck. Yes, my CDR drive is an older IDE one. I did have a SCSI one in the past though, but that was many years ago! :) http://bootcd.narod.ru/index_e.htm lists an ASPI.SYS Goodluck :) thanx a bunch! -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] Freedos-user basic how-to questions...
Hi All, I'm fairly new to FreeDOS having discovered it (installed) only about a month ago. I really love it as it has repurposed an older PC a LOT of my very old floppies associated software of yesteryear (1980's +). Anyway, I have 2 how-to questions that I'm hoping I can get help with... 1 How can I use my USB flash drives in FDOS? I checked my CMOS settings. 'Legacy USB' support is enabled, but when I tried accessing the flash drive in FDOS, it wasn't available. I'm assuming, once working, I would be able to use it as a floppy? This would allow me to put files on my modern PC. 2 I'd also like to be able to burn files to my optical drive as opposed to only reading from it. Is there an app to burn files to CD from FDOS? This also would allow me to put files to my modern PC. Other than these 2 things, FDOS has been very useful to me. I'm so thankful for it. -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] Freedos-user Digest, Vol 783, Issue 1
From: rugx...@gmail.com Since you already mentioned very old floppies, does this mean some of your machines don't have (the appropriately-sized) floppy drives? Yes, exactly. I didn't elaborate earlier, but that is the case. By floppies, I'm referring to the 3.5 1.44mb ones although, I even have a few of the 5.25 variety. Some of the 5.25 are 360k, but most of them are 1.2mb. At least I don't have any 160k or 80k types. When the 80k 160k were being used, I was probably using cassette tapes. I can say one good thing about the old data cassette tapes: they made floppy drives seem really fast! :) I was so glad to finally be able use floppies vs tapes! After I eventually got one, I thought HDs were so much superior than floppies, speed-wise. (oops! I was daydreaming of the'old' days again) You're right though, I have 3 modern PCs with Win 7 on them, none of which have a floppy drive controller. So, I resurrected an older PC that does have a floppy controller. It's a P-III 733mhz that used to run Win 98 back in he late 90s. I must say, running old DOS software on the 733 is so much faster than what I used to run DOS in! I think the latter DOS days were on a 486-66 or maybe it was the 386-40(not sure), though early on I started on an 8088, 2 360k floppies, no HD, monochrome (my first 'clone' PC). Usually you can insert a USB jump drive before turning on (booting) and the BIOS should emulate it as a DOS drive for you, assuming it's formatted as (some variant of) FAT (-16, -32). OK, thanks! I didn't think of that. I'm not 100% sure, but I bet I plugged in the flash drive _after_ booting as per Win! If not, you have to try something like Bret's USB drivers (and your machine must support UHCI) Sorry, what's UHCI? or (from modern Windows) try the RUFUS (bootable DOS USB) installer. http://www.bretjohnson.us/ http://rufus.akeo.ie/ thanx So from old machine to new machine? Old machine has floppy but new doesn't? I assume you don't (or can't or won't) have networking on the old machine (understandable! frustrating!). If you did (maybe even with mTCP + packet driver), that'd be one way. You're right on all counts. I thought about using an ethernet network since the Win 7 PCs have it but wanted to avoid that headache if possible... :) Otherwise, you have to have some drive (hard? floppy?) to install / use with the other machine. I do have a USB floppy drive that _could_ work. Using a flash drive would be a lot easier though. In fact, if you can get USB drive working, you can copy files to and from that with ease. This is probably easier than constantly burning a CD-RW or whatever. I was thinking by using CDs, though, I would benefit by having a good back-up and storage would be much more compact, (650mb vs 1.44mb). Storage space is now a consideration for me especially since floppies are now obsolete? There might be unofficial (buggy?) builds of cdrkit for DOS. I can't remember the name or version of that alleged DOS (freeware?) CD burning program, and I'm not sure how well it worked. IIRC, the main problem was lacking an ASPI.SYS driver, which is proprietary (closed source, not free nor libre). Hence I don't think FreeDOS proper ships with such a thing (maybe they had an optional .BAT to use wget to grab it back in the day, dunnno ...). Thanx, for the tips!At least I have some direction to go in now! :) A lot of peripherals depends on decent drivers. I think this is the main problem (or advantage) with any OS these days. This is one big reason why people stick to Linux or Windows. Unfortunately, DOS isn't always supported (well, if at all) by hardware companies. Not trying to be overly pessimistic, but it's the cold hard truth. I agree. -- Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book Graph Databases is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
