17 Jun
1999
17 Jun
'99
4:29 a.m.
On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Greg Linder wrote:
adapter, and can get it to ask me to abort, retry, or
fail, but I cannot
IF the message "Abort, Retry, Fail" came from MS-DOS, not some wannabe
program, then it is the SECOND line of a TWO LINE message. The FIRST line
of that message is the part that has information! The second line is
merely asking what you want to do about it. What does that first line
say?
My question is this: What do I put on a hard drive to
get it to
boot? It seems reluctant to boot off of a conventional micro-IDE drive
that has MS-DOS on it, and if I don't have a drive plugged in it says GRiD
Bios v. something.something.
It might be expecting a hard drive of some specific geometry (cylinders
and heads). Then when it sees something else, it's going to the wrong
location looking for the boot files. Sorry, but I don't know what to do.
Is there an accessible C-MOS editor to set the parameters?
Good luck.
On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Marvin wrote:
I didn't realize a DOS 1.25 was issued; I only
have DOS 1.1 (1.01?)
There was an MS-DOS 1.25, but not a PC-DOS. The second released version of
PC-DOS was 1.10 Note that the part after the PERIOD was stored
internally as ten, and the part after the period was then ALWAYS displayed
as a 2 digit decimal number. MS-DOS was released to other OEMs, who could
even change the NAME! (Z-DOS, etc.) Most of them (Compaq, etc.) called
that version 1.25 Note that the part after the PERIOD was stored
internally as twenty five.
If you compare 1.10 and 1.25, you will find some differences in the
chrome, trim, and emblems. (like the Toyotas and Geos produced in the
NUMI plant) MOST of the real differences will be in the MODE.COM program,
although there can be changes in IO.SYS to reflect any serious hardware
differences. And MS-DOS v 1.25 from two different computer manufacturers
are different!!! The changes in IO.SYS and MODE.COM were made to fit a
specific weirdity, each one is different!!!!
Likewise, PC-DOS had a V 2.10 (that's "two period ten"), and OEMs had
MS-DOS 2.11 ("two period eleven"), some of which had major changes in
IO.SYS for things like 3.5" drives (which didn't hit PC-DOS until 3.20).
However, MS-DOS 3.31 had a MAJOR internal difference from PC-DOS 3.30 (IBM
never released 3.31 until they renamed 3.40 into 4.00). That was support
of drives larger than 32 Megabytes. (a Megabyte is 1048576 bytes)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com