Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, After lots of testing and lots of help from Jack Ellis and Eric, I was able more or less to overcome the roadblocks: a) Gibberish after boot: use only JEMMEX, and/or replace HIMEMX with XMGR /T0 (or /B /T0 and then /T0 per documentation) b)Freedos 1.2 pre22 not booting after installation, re

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

On Tue, 09 Aug 2016 13:57:35 -0400, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > The issue I am facing now is that the mechanical drives I connected to > the > secondary IDE channel of my Vesa Local Bus controller are not detected. > Windows 98 SE bootdisk does not detect them either, The BIOS of my system > o

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, I had some more time to spend on this project today. I reinstalled Freedos on a 2 GB disk-on-module. Again after installation I had to do a sys from 2031 bootdisk and then copy kernel.sys to get a bootable freedos 1.2 system. I can use my CDROM connected to the IDE interface on the Sound Blast

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486 (digression)

Hi JAS, indeed I am trying to motivate people to use TLS/SSL ;-) There must be SOME browsers for DOS which can handle it! Note that I was talking about Google Drive, not the basic search engine. The Drive needs a lot of heavy JavaScript. Eric > https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/specials/ -

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Eric, I have tried the /FORCE:CHS and it did not help. Cheers, Dimitris On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 7:19 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Dimitris, > > > I retried sys c: from the 2031 bootdisk and it failed to boot, hanging at > > Loading FreeDOS, hard drive working like mad, I rebooted with the s

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, So now I have only the master HDD on primary IDE connected and the floppy. It did not change anything. I was able to confirm the CHS/settings - BIOS has a menu called IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION. When all the jumpers etc are correct, it will detect the drive and offer 3 options - LBA, LARGE, NORMA

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 7:56 PM, wrote: > On Jul 20, 2016 12:57 PM, "Dimitris Zilaskos" wrote: > > > > Hi > > > > > > > Since I now have a bootable C: drive, can't we just compare the working > MBR/boot sector with the non working one? > > > > Cheers, > > > > Dimitris > > > > Would you

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 20, 2016, at 5:23 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > Hi, > > On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. > wrote: >> On Jul 20, 2016, at 12:56 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos > > wrote: >> […] >> Dimitris > > I have a few silly ques

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. wrote: > On Jul 20, 2016, at 12:56 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos > wrote: > […] > > Dimitris > > > I have a few silly questions. > > You have verified the drive has the correct jumpers set? > Correct, master / slave > > You are not trying to u

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 20, 2016, at 12:56 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > […] > Dimitris I have a few silly questions. You have verified the drive has the correct jumpers set? You are not trying to use cable select mode? You are using the correct position on the IDE cable? You are plugged into the primary

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

On Jul 20, 2016 12:57 PM, "Dimitris Zilaskos" wrote: > > Hi > > > Since I now have a bootable C: drive, can't we just compare the working MBR/boot sector with the non working one? > > Cheers, > > Dimitris > Would you please copy kernel.sys from the 2042 release to your C drive and see if it

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Dimitris, > I retried sys c: from the 2031 bootdisk and it failed to boot, hanging at > Loading FreeDOS, hard drive working like mad, I rebooted with the same > floppy, did the same thing, and it booted. Tried again with sys 3.6e, > hang again, tried again with sys 2.6, was able to boot again.

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Dimitris, > > > So I did, with sys 3.6e - FreeDOS 1.2 pre floppy: > > > > sys c: /FORCE:CHS - system hangs on reboot > > sys c: /FORCE:LBA , followed by sys CONFIG c:\kernel.sys FORCELBA=1 > > GLOBALENABLELBA=1 > > > > - system tries to

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Dimitris, > So I did, with sys 3.6e - FreeDOS 1.2 pre floppy: > > sys c: /FORCE:CHS - system hangs on reboot > sys c: /FORCE:LBA , followed by sys CONFIG c:\kernel.sys FORCELBA=1 > GLOBALENABLELBA=1 > > - system tries to BOOT, hangs at Loading FreeDOS , the hard drive > works like mad until

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, I have tried sys 2.6 with 2042, I checked and sys CONFIG reported both FORCELBA and GLOBALENABLELBA were set to 0. Reboot resuts in a hang at Loading FreeDOS, hard drive and the floppy leds are lit up and hard drive works like mad. Cheers, Dimitris On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 1:25 PM, Dimitris

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Dimitris, > > long analysis follows, some suggestions at the bottom of this mail :-) > > > Thank you for your reply. I tried few kernel and here are the results: > > I gather you mean "you tried the SYS of a few kernels together with

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Dimitris, long analysis follows, some suggestions at the bottom of this mail :-) > Thank you for your reply. I tried few kernel and here are the results: I gather you mean "you tried the SYS of a few kernels together with the corresponding KERNEL versions"? My focus is on the SYS activity, a

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

By the way, Rugxulo... :-) https://www.auersoft.eu/soft/specials/ After only a few years, my domain should be up more often again :-) So in case you have hidden it in LSM links, it can be shown again. Cheers, Eric > Heck, since you say you have Debian (but is that separate machine?), > you cou

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, Thank you for your reply. I tried few kernel and here are the results: 2041_86f16 : floppy boots but no hard drives detected 2041_86f32: boots, detects HDD, sys is successfull but hard drive fails to boot 2041_386f32: as above 2039_86f32: as above 2035a: as above 2020: fails to boot even from

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 8:26 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > I have LBA configured in the BIOS for the hard drives, mostly because it > keeps BIOS boot and Windows 98 working. I was unable so far to find a > working combination with different non LBA modes. I will retry sys c: on a > new FAT

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, With /X and /NOABOVE16 there is no gibberish but a hang. The last message HimemX prints is KBC A20 method used. btmgr was a pain to install - does not compile on the Debian 8 system which is the only other system I have with working floppy drive. I did not try to install the rpm but what work

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, No EDD here: ERROR: Your BIOS/INT13h doesn't support EDD extension. Cheers, Dimitris On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 7:16 AM, Louis Santillan wrote: > Dimitris, > > What does EDDINFO [0] display? > > > [0] http://rayer.g6.cz/programm/eddinfo.exe > > On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Mateusz Viste

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, I will try to double check. It was difficult for me to find a working combination of CHS and mode. However Windows98 had no issues with identical settings. Best regards, Dimitris On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 6:56 AM, Mateusz Viste wrote: > I might be missing the boat here, but what you describ

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Dimitris and others, as I received some (aggressive) corrections from Jack and Johnson: Yes of course I can read manuals myself. The XMGR option /T0 means 'No "E820h" nor "E801h" requests.' so please try if the two HIMEMX options /X (no int 15.e820 requests) and /NOABOVE16 (no int 15.e801 req

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Dimitris, What does EDDINFO [0] display? [0] http://rayer.g6.cz/programm/eddinfo.exe On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Mateusz Viste wrote: > I might be missing the boat here, but what you describe vaguely look > like a problem I had in some distant past, when I misconfigured my HDD > in the B

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think FreeDOS (all DOSes?) depends on an LBA/EDD capable BIOS when using FAT32 [0][1]. It could be you have a drive and/or BIOS with buggy/incomplete/incompatible/non-existent LBA/EDD implementations. Being your computer is 486-based, that is very much a pos

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

I might be missing the boat here, but what you describe vaguely look like a problem I had in some distant past, when I misconfigured my HDD in the BIOS. Perhaps you could check whether your drive's geometry is 100% correct in your BIOS? Mateusz On 19/07/2016 07:12, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote:

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, I was able to reinstall and boot successfully by performing an fdisk without FAT32 support, and creating a FAT16 2GB partition. At least with JEMM386, that is. So FAT32 support being the issue may be the case. Let me know if I can try anything else to confirm that. Cheers, Dimitris On Tue,

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 1:58 AM, Rugxulo wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos > wrote: > > > > Thank you for following up. fdisk reports that C: drive is already > active. I > > did run mbrzap it completed successfully but there has been no change, > > system

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > Thank you for following up. fdisk reports that C: drive is already active. I > did run mbrzap it completed successfully but there has been no change, > system gets stuck right after BIOS summary table. What filesystem(s) are you u

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, Thank you for following up. fdisk reports that C: drive is already active. I did run mbrzap it completed successfully but there has been no change, system gets stuck right after BIOS summary table. Cheers, Dimitris On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 12:29 AM, Jerome Shidel wrote: > > > On Jul 18, 20

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, fdisk /mbr:80 did not change anything. Here some BIOS screens: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_Wed09TVi1YY3VNR2s https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeWDdxWXRrY2NpWEU https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeQ3ctSS14Z1RINlk Here is a video of the system booting from

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 6:52 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > Dear Jerome, > > From what I can tell I never get past the boot loader to be struck by himemx. > Ok try this: Boot your modified FDI floppy. It should detect FreeDOS has been already installed and go straight to the command prompt

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Eric Auer wrote: > > Hi Dimitris, > > > * Getting rid of himemx: this works ... > > But very slow and lots of floppy access: I assume you booted from > floppy because the BIOS does not support CD boot and the CD also > needs to be some ancient model connecte

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Dear Jerome, >From what I can tell I never get past the boot loader to be struck by himemx. Cheers, Dimitris On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 10:49 PM, Jerome Shidel wrote: > Did you change the installed config? > > It uses himemx as well. > > Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, gramm

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Did you change the installed config? It uses himemx as well. Sent from my iPhone, ignore bad sentence structures, grammatical errors and incorrect spell-corrected words. > On Jul 18, 2016, at 3:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > Thank you all for your suggestions. What I have tried so far:

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi Dimitris, > * Getting rid of himemx: this works ... But very slow and lots of floppy access: I assume you booted from floppy because the BIOS does not support CD boot and the CD also needs to be some ancient model connected to the sound card? Then I wonder if a newer model would work if conne

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Dimitris, For giggles, could you do two things? First, capture the BIOS screens for booting and IDE/HD parameters. Second, after installing FreeDOS to C: drive, run the command `fdisk /MBR:80`. On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 12:46 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > Thank you all for your suggestions. Wha

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Thank you all for your suggestions. What I have tried so far: * Getting rid of himemx: this works - the boot process continues and the installer tries to start. However the floppy drive works continuously like mad, screen updates are slow, and I the installation appears to be stuck in the 'Gath

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Your driver is the problem this might be a case for the XCDROM.SYS driver combined with SHCDX86.COM - A quick way to find out download this file https://sourceforge.net/projects/xosl-ow/files/xosl-ow116/BootMedia/BootFloppy/ and see if you have clean drive access. On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 9:02 AM,

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 9:02 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos > wrote: > > Hi, > > Thanks for the followup. Hitting F8 reveals HIMEMX triggering this problem: > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeSWtGNXN0NmxxaU0 >

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi again, On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > I am trying to install FreeDOS on my old 486. > > Versions 1.1 and 1.2 floppy bootdisks either hang on boot printing odd > characters or will not detect the CDROM. As mentioned, CD-ROM may not be well-supported by default. Y

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 8:02 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > > Thanks for the followup. Hitting F8 reveals HIMEMX triggering this problem: > > Let me know what else I can try - I will recheck the floppies for starters > in case they went bad and check the rest of your suggestions. Unless I'm

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

Hi, Thanks for the followup. Hitting F8 reveals HIMEMX triggering this problem: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeSWtGNXN0NmxxaU0 ​​I have observed that the gibberish stops given sufficient time: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeVjVMalF6M2YtMTA Let me know what else I ca

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 7:51 AM, Dimitris Zilaskos > wrote: > I have tried it please see the output attached. This is endlessly scrolling > after drives are detected. > > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zW1ur6Z_WeY2tOSXpNT2g3NUJWMWx6bFZlSFBjamE3VEFr > >

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

One more thing, > On Jul 18, 2016, at 2:34 AM, Louis Santillan wrote: > [...] > Install FD 1.2 beta. `sys c:` at the end of your install. I don’t think you need to do the ‘sys c:’ at the end of the install anymore. It shouldn’t hurt anything if you do run it. Now, on the other hand. If the ins

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

> On Jul 18, 2016, at 2:34 AM, Louis Santillan wrote: > > On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos > wrote: > > […] > >> Is there a recommended strategy to get FreeDOS installed on such an ancient >> system? Did some research and tried several bootdisks that float around, >> nothin

Re: [Freedos-user] Which freedos on 486

On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 5:21 PM, Dimitris Zilaskos wrote: > Hi, > > I am trying to install FreeDOS on my old 486. Version 1.0 will boot from > floppy (only with himem, emm3886 with crash), detect CDROM drive (only if > connected on Vesa Local bus controller, not on SB16 IDE - tertiary ide IDE It