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

[Terry Stewart]

 >That link mentions ExittoDOS.pif, and searches for it turn up related
information about dosstart.bat.
>I'd suggest digging around for them and some web searches.

Hmm..interesting.

>From a brief search and a test it seems using these files (or at least ones
similar to those described) may have allowed use of the MS-DOS drivers in
MS-DOS 7.1 but only AFTER a reboot from the GUI.  According to this..

http://madsenworld.dk/con_auto/index-uk.htm#dosstart

..dosstart.bat seems to be used when you EXIT from Windows and reboot to
DOS, rather than the start of a boot.  .

As to ExittoDOS.pif, this doesn't seem to exist on a Windows 98SE install.
What does exist are three PIF files called Dosprmpt, MSDOS mode for games
and MSDOS modes for games with EMS and XMS support.  I found you can edit a
config.sys and autoexec.bat box as part of the program's properties.
HOWEVER, these configs only seem to take effect with exiting Windows from
"Shut Down" --> "Restart in MSDOS mode".  I can't see anywhere how you can
use these BEFORE the GUI is loaded.  Certainly going straight to the
command line doesn't load them. What IS loaded when you do that is what's
ever in the existing config.sys and autoexec.bat.

As I don't want to waste time loading the GUI first, I'll stick with what
I've done.  It works and is quite efficient...but it does seem strange
there is no built-in facility to select an alternative Config.sys and
autoexec.bat if the user is going straight for the built in CLI on boot?
You would think that would be an obvious need.  It's always possible I
might have overlooked something, although I did spend a fair amount of time
in the search, and testing various permutations.

Terry (Tez)







On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 5:58 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On 02/07/2018 09:53 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>
> That link mentions ExittoDOS.pif, and searches for it turn up related
> information about dosstart.bat.
>
> I'd suggest digging around for them and some web searches.
>
> I don't currently have a 9x (V)M to test things on.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Grant. . . .
> unix || die
>