MS-DOS Question

[Farabomb]

Ok, seems that my Pent-200 does not like OS installs.

I was kicking around at work and found a set of MS-DOS 6.22 disks. Seeing that folding is run in a colsole window would it be safe to assume that I can run it in MS-DOS?

I'm thinking yes but has anyone tried it?

[lechumbl]

Hi Al,

Only thing I see is you need network connectivity to use it.
Do you have it in MS-DOS?

Take care......

[Farabomb]

Good point Lee I didn't think of that.

I forget that DOS was back in the day of sneaker net.

I remember connecting to a network in DOS back when I was in school but I think that was the Novell class.

May have to find a copy of Win 3.11wg :D

[Synthohol]

al, i have nt w/s 4.0 a guarunteed loader! just call!

[Farabomb]

Nothing is guarunteed :)

The problem I'm having is that the CD-ROM is throwing errors left and right. I've been trying to copy the i386 folder from a 4.0 disk for a week! it's only on the m's now :)

What I need to do is put the drive in another box and copy the i386 and then install from there. But I'd rather not rip apart two boxes tonight.

[tripodal]

whats bad the drive or the cd?
if its the drive you can switch them hot .....
(long story)

but why not just take the rom out of your main rig

[Farabomb]

I'm thinking it's the drive. It does this with every CD I put in.

Not like it's too hard to take out my CD in my main box. It is on rails :)

I'm not gonna swap anything hot. I have a bad habit of causing my computer to combust.

[lechumbl]

Hi Al,

Ya, no need to take the chance of frying anything, especially to save 30 seconds of shutdown time. :D
Turn it off regular and change the CD Drive and you be set.

Take care........

[tripodal]

I should explain why i know this works.

Some cd-roms will boot cd's.... mainly newer / faster ones.
some old cdroms dont. (not on this particular mobo)


anyways... i had a 24x that ran for crap... if there was a tiny scratch it wouldnt read a file, so when installing xp on a scratched cd i would boot it off of the 24x to get into setup
then when i got a file error...

unpower it, and un ide it. then connect the old behemoth 2x cdrom (which would read the foggyist cds) ow well i really should have just got a new cd rom or a better cd.. but you know how it is whwen you are in the middle you dont want to leave and come back

[Synthohol]

Originally posted by Farabomb
Nothing is guarunteed :)

The problem I'm having is that the CD-ROM is throwing errors left and right. I've been trying to copy the i386 folder from a 4.0 disk for a week! it's only on the m's now :)

ya know what, that happened to me on kens computer, it turned out to be a bad ide channel, i put an ata100 card in it and the load was a cakewalk! just a thought.

[sptw]

sorry to put my noise here guys, but i think that one advise as that don't hurt anyone :)

"Connecting and disconnecting the devices "on the fly" (Hot Swap) is necessary a use of special eletronics and a special connectors on the drives that are designed to ensure that the ground connections between the drive and the bus are maintained at any time that the device has power. This means that when removing a device, the power connection has to be broken before the ground connection, and when re-inserting a device, the ground connection has to be made before the power connection is re-established.Without this special things, when connecting and disconnecting drivers on the fly you can create a difference of potencial that can damage the controller, the drivers or even the motherboards".

[gntlmn]

depending on the network card you can load dos network drivers to set a network. Connect it to you current network using Netbeui. You may be able to find some of the DOS TCP/IP clients I am not sure if you can. They were around in the beginning of the Internet ISP growth craze.

[Farabomb]

Even with the i396 folder on the hd I'm still getting boot loader errors.

If someone can give me a hand with connecting DOS to a network I'd be very happy. :)

[Synthohol]

what nic card, ive done about 10 mnetwork installs in basement from 4.0 server. also i got 2k server remote install goin, let me know! also are you using winnt /b to install with no floppies?
use my basement during day if u want any of 5 pc,s here should help you one way or another!

[Farabomb]

c:\i386> winnt /b /s c:\i386

and I get a bootloader error. This box used to work. Had 98 and corel linux on it. Maybe I have to install 98

/looks for a copy of 98 that I sweared I'd never use again

[Synthohol]

hmm, try winnt /ox and make the 3 boot disks give it a whirl
hey is the hdd fat or fat32 fat 16 is reqd or ntfs use fdisk to see.

[Synthohol]

wait, a boot loader error? the boot.ini handles that, use the type command to read it should be [boot loader] timeout=15 default=multi (0) disk (0) rdisk (0) partition (1) \winnt
(os listings)

ill ck back later

[gntlmn]

What NIC do you have? did you try to make boot floppies to do the install?

I have an alternative idea. take the harddisk and install it in another PC. Format the drive with system files. Copy the Windows disk to the drive. Boot the drive in the machine you are having issues with and run setup from the harddrive where you copied the windows CD. Oh and make sure you created the proper config.sys. It will need to unclude the himem.sys command something like
device=c:\himem.sys

I dont know where you will copy the himem.sys file to

If you want to connect via a boot floppy I can help you make that. It will require that you have the dos drivers for your NIC.

[tripodal]

thats a very good idea, put the drive in another system and run the winnt.exe from i386 i believe
at the first reboot put the drive back in the other puter

[tripodal]

you will have to boot off of a win 95.98 cd that has cd rom support ... if you boot off of the cd it will load a southbridge drive and youll do no good

[Synthohol]

i believe the problem was trying to install NT server 4.0 to a fat32 hdd. 4.0 cant read fat32 only fat(16) or ntfs. 2000 can read any but he is loading 4.0. ill have to wait and see.

[Farabomb]

Well Fat16 and the i386 file worked for the install but when I rebooted keeps saying hit a key to reboot

Grrrr..

[tripodal]

there is no boot os on the drive
boot with a floppy then run the setup... it should work then
it wont install the basic boot files till now

[Farabomb]

I booted with a Win98 startup disk to get to c:, Typed c:\i386>winnt /b /s c:\i386 and it went into startup. It did what it had to do and then said remove floppys and reboot.

Did that and that's where I get the press a key to reboot.

Grrr maybe it's time to try 98

[tripodal]

i dont know about the command line options, never used them.. but it sounds like your drive may be bad

[Synthohol]

i think the /s option messed it up try just winnt /b it will prompt you for where the i386 files are, that should do it!:)

[Synthohol]

Originally posted by Farabomb
I booted with a Win98 startup disk to get to c:, Typed c:\i386>winnt /b /s c:\i386 and it went into startup. It did what it had to do and then said remove floppys and reboot.

Did that and that's where I get the press a key to reboot.

Grrr maybe it's time to try 98
win98 boot disks are fat32, you need an old win95 boot disk for fat16

[Farabomb]

Win 98 boot disks are Fat32. Yup, But I formated the drive on my main box with Fat16. I don't think it matters what disk I boot from but I can be wrong. If you type winnt /? it says that if you use /b you need /s. /s c:i386 just skips the blue screeen asking where the files are.

The drive just may be shot. But it works fine in my main box?? Hmm.:confused:

[Synthohol]

yes the boot disk matters, thats what loads the expected file system.
the offer to use any pc on my network still stands.

[Farabomb]

Originally posted by Synthohol
yes the boot disk matters, thats what loads the expected file system.


Are you sure? So if I put a 98 boot disk in it converts my Fat16 drive to a Fat32 on the fly?

I only use the 98 disk because of the CD drivers. I have a 95 disk somewhere and I'll try it if I can find it.

[tripodal]

fat 32 tho is backwards compatable with 16 tho, yea your right the drive cannot be bad. did you try it w/o the cmd line switches?

[Farabomb]

No I haven't tried w/o the switches but that means I have to find 3 floppys.

I think I burned 'em all :D

[Synthohol]

nope just winnt /b it never fails!
hey you can do a network install of W/S4.0 from my server ill make the boot disk, all i need is the dos drivers from your NIC.
if you want boot floppies i have about 30 or so, you only need to erase office95 from them, it was a 36 disk set!

P.S. i like the way this thread showed up in the folding forum, relevency 12%
if you want also i have some 350 mb hdd's i canput i386 on it 4 you!:)

[Synthohol]

Originally posted by Farabomb


Are you sure? So if I put a 98 boot disk in it converts my Fat16 drive to a Fat32 on the fly?

it doesnt convert anything it just puts the memory in fat32/fat readability