How to enable USB drives in both Windows 98SE AND MS-DOS 7.1.

[Grant Taylor]

On 02/07/2018 09:14 PM, Terry Stewart wrote:
> Yes, the files you speak of are config.dos and autoexec.dos.  These 
> confused me at first because I thought just as you did. I put the driver 
> files in there. However, those files seem to be associated with the 
> PREVIOUS MS-DOS version (if one exists) prior to installation of Windows 
> 98, NOT the CLI of Windows 98 (MS-DOS 7.1).  There is an option when 
> starting Windows 98 to boot to an earlier version of MS-DOS.  If this 
> earlier version is selected, then config.dos and autoexec.dos are read 
> and processed as config.sys and autoexec.bat for the DOS boot.  
> Otherwise, if booting the Windows 98 (MS-DOS 7.1) CLI, these files are 
> ignored and only autoexec.bat and config.sys (if they exist) are processed.

According to the following link from IBM, the process we are both 
thinking of is valid, just using different files.

http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/c546.htm

> Initially, I thought booting to the previous DOS install (in my case 
> MS-DOS 6.2) would solve the USB problem, and I simply called up the 
> older DOS (MS-DOS 6.2) with the drivers using those *.dos files.  
> However, I was then crippled by only being able to use a USB drive with 
> FAT16 and a small capacity.  I needed an MS-DOS 7.1 environment to give 
> me FAT 32 hence the config.sys "menu" system.

Ya.  MS-DOS < 7.x doesn't understand FAT-32 drives.  -  I think there 
are drivers that you can load to add support for it.  Or you can just 
use MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, and COMMAND.COM from Windows 9x.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die