14 Mar
2006
14 Mar
'06
10:03 p.m.
I thought that you guys would have worked that out by now.
Step 1. You need a DOS bootable device, or a FAT16 partition for the
first partition of the drive. It must be less than 2G. (NT is capable of
having a 4G FAT16, because they finally realized the difference between a
long and an unsigned long.
2. The MBR (Master Boot Record) needs to be modified for dual booting.
That can be done with the modern OS.
IFF you can read a floppy, and boot DOS (>4) or Windoze 95/98/ME from
ANYTHING, even CD (even just for the day), then skip to PLAN B.
3. The partition needs to be formatted (setting up the DIR structures,
etc.). That can be done by FORMAT. Format must be for the correct range
of size, but can be done by almost any ver of the OS.
4. The Boot sector of the DOS partition needs to be written. That can be
done by with certain versions of SYS, or by copying the sector from a
working copy that has a comparably sized partition. The cluster size
changes at powers of 2, so, for example, if the partition will be 980K,
then copy the boot sector from one that is between 512K and 1G.
(NOTE all numbers are "CS" binary, Mebibytes and Gibibytes, where a meg is
1048576, NOT IBM's 1024000, nor marketing 1000000.)
To copy the boot sector using DEBUG:
L 100 x 0 1
R CX
200
N Y:abcd
W
on destination machine
DEBUG Y:abcd
W 100 z 0 1
NOTE: if you do not already know the DEBUG commands, then the only DEBUG
command that you should use right now is: Q
5. IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (or IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM) need to be copied
to the right location. ATTRIB *.* -s-h-r will unhide them.
6. COMMAND.COM needs to be copied.
or
PLAN B:
1. Format the new boot partition. FORMAT x: /S IF you were able to boot
with the OS that you want.
2. If you were NOT able to boot with the OS that you want, but can boot
SOME version of DOS (5.x - 95/98/ME), such as a bootable 98 CD, then SYS
Early versions of SYS must be run on the boot device, to install THAT
version of OS to the new drive.
Late versions of SYS will permit an "X-Y" installation.
If you can READ a DOS disk, even if not bootable (such as a DOS 5.00
diskette in an LS120 drive, ...) then SYS x:\ y: will copy the system
files from drive x: to drive y:.
NOTE: just to add to the fun,...
no version of SYS will run on a system that was booted with some other
version of OS than the one that that SYS came from. That can be subverted
with DOSVER, or in DEBUG, find
MOV Ah, 30
Int 21
CMP AX, ...
JE . . .
and replace it with JMP.
All other files can just be copied.
When DOS 6.00 came out, MS shipped it with an install program that was
hardwired to install it on C:. The machine that I wanted it on's hard
drive was E:, and I did NOT want it on a 3" SS disk (my C: drive on that
machine). Microsoft said, "If you don't want it on C:, then install it on
C: and then copy it to the drive that you want." Yeah. Right.
Once I had made a 360K 6.00 system diskette, then the hell with their
install procedure.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com