MS-DOS 6.2 bootable cd

[dhruba.bandopadhyay]

I had a search around and found an article of someone mentioning they got MS-DOS installation on bootable cd.

I am wondering if anyone who has done this to let me know how they manage to do this?

Best burning program is Nero Burning ROM. It specifies two types of bootable CD-ROMs:

1. CD-ROM (Boot)

2. CD-ROM (EFI Boot)

I guess if I have the floppy disks then the boot image data is easy to get. However if I only backed up my MS-DOS 6.2 files of the disks then I won't have the boot image data. If the latter is the case, can Nero still do sometime to make it boot up (like grab the Windows 98SE boot image instead). Then we have unseen problems such as whether MS-DOS setup/install requires data from A:\ drive. Hmm...

[prx984]

first you would need to make the boot image from a dos 6.2 startup disk. so what i would do in your case, is get that boot image then load it on a floppy disc, then modify the cd-rom drivers to it will recognize your drive, then when you have it done, use nero to make a cd with the dos 6.2 setup files on it bootable with that image.

if you need any help, im sure i could help with this as i have played around a lot with bootable disks.

[randiroo76073]

Sorry

Channel ck, I seemed to be locked out of forum posting.

Hmm, just locked out of starting new thread/post ???

Edited August 18, 2006 by randiroo76073

[LLXX]

MS-DOS 6.2 is not recommended, since it does NOT support FAT32 drives.

The recommended version is MS-DOS 7.1.

Either way, all you need is the IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM files.

The boot sector can come from any floppy (they should all have one when formatted).

[os2fan2]

You need a specifically formatted MS-DOS boot sector to boot MS-DOS. The version with Windows 9x will not do here. Programs like WinImage will create a boot sector with MS-DOS 4.xx-6.xx boot sector. A pc-dos boot sector won't do either.

For formatting a disk, if a real DOS session is not available, try the freedos SYS. It has options that allow you to build MS-DOS, WIN9x, PC-DOS and DR-DOS boot sectors along with the standard freedos one. It works with pc-dos. (who but fanatic OS collectors has ms-dos or ms-os2??).

You might want an older DOS disk, because some programs will not run under DOS 7, or you might be trying to recreate vintage systems in a virtual machine. The particular DOS i am using here is PC-DOS 6.31 (ie 6.30 + assorted patches, with this as a working title).

[jaclaz]

There are a few ways to make a bootable CD:

1) The El_Torito standard, which involves using a floppy image either 1.44 or 2.88 Mbytes as "bootsector"

2) The no-emulation image, which involves using a special bootloader, this is typically used by Microsoft NT/2K/XP/2003 Setup disks

3) The Hard-Disk emulation this is an actually VERY poorly documented feature of Nero

for 1) there is no problem, you just make a floppy image of the DOS floppy and you are done, just search on the net, there are hundreds of tutorials on how to use Nero to make a CD from a floppy image

for 2) I may suggest GRLDR (part of the GRUB4DOS package) that can act as a no-emulation mode bootloader, that thus gives you all the power of GRUB for booting nearly every OS, I would use mkisofs to build a CD with GRLDR, but it might be possible with Nero too.

Simply search fro GRUB4DOS on the 911cd forum, you will find quite a bit of posts/links.

for 3) read these:

http://www.geocities.com/freedatarecovery/

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=19003

Check this also:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=735

jaclaz

[Andromeda43]

I had a search around and found an article of someone mentioning they got MS-DOS installation on bootable cd.

I am wondering if anyone who has done this to let me know how they manage to do this?

Best burning program is Nero Burning ROM. It specifies two types of bootable CD-ROMs:

1. CD-ROM (Boot)

2. CD-ROM (EFI Boot)

I guess if I have the floppy disks then the boot image data is easy to get. However if I only backed up my MS-DOS 6.2 files of the disks then I won't have the boot image data. If the latter is the case, can Nero still do sometime to make it boot up (like grab the Windows 98SE boot image instead). Then we have unseen problems such as whether MS-DOS setup/install requires data from A:\ drive. Hmm...

Hi,

Is there any special reason or need for wanting to have a DOS 6.2 boot disk (CD)?

I've been working with DOS since the 2.0 days and I see no advantage to 6.2 when that wasn't even the last version before Windows 95 came out to replace DOS all together.

If you want a great DOS boot CD that will allow you to perform FDISK, Format, Scandisk, etc and do some cleanup on a FAT-32 hard drive, then you need my custom Windows ME boot CD (DOS 7.x)

You can have it in two formats.

1. A floppy disk builder, executable file. (wnMEboot.exe)

2. An .iso file to make the CD directly.....Nero or any credible CD burning software can handle this one.

(ME-Boot CD.iso)

You can get either one from my (rented) download site at:

http://tools.house-tech.net

Click the "Computer Tools" topic to enter the download page.

It's completely free and a quick download. Take a look and see if it will help you out.

Cheers!

Andromeda43

[LLXX]

...Windows ME uses DOS 8.0 which actually has reduced functionality over 7.1.

[dhruba.bandopadhyay]

Okay, I don't need MS-DOS 6.2 anymore since I found out that the best MS-DOS version was in Win98SE. So now am trying to build a MS-DOS 7.0 bootable CD & installation - BUT for games, not generic.

Here's what I found...

In Win98 \WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD folder contains the Emergency Boot Disk (without the msdos.sys & ebd.sys files for some reason). I extracted the 1.44MB bootable image from the Win98 CD-ROM just to do complete. This is only an Emergency Boot Disk and not tweaked for games. However it's got a good selectable menu system.

In the Win98 \WINDOWS\ there are two files called:

MS-DOS Mode for Games.pif (XMS loading for games)

MS-DOS Mode for Games with EMS and XMS Support.pif (emm386 emulates EMS in XMS)

When double-click either files, they temporarily swap C:\autoexec.bat & C:\config.sys with optimized versions of autoexec.bat & config.sys for games. Why two different pairs of files? Some games were fussy whether emm386 was loaded and other games didn't like it.

So this is a very good idea to embed the differences in the EBD autoexec.bat & config.sys, since there's a choice menu system already programmed in the EBD autoexec & config.

Just needed to copy emm386.exe from C:\WINDOWS\ & also mscdex.exe (from ebd.cab). I also changed RAMDrive to load 16MB (instead of 2MB). Tested CD and it boots perfectly, so user can boot a PC with no harddisk and still run programs that require writing to disk. If the user has a DOS sound card then he can add the drivers to autoexec & config files.

What I want to know is how to install this MS-DOS into a blank C:\ ? Does msdos.sys & io.sys files have to be in the first sector/cluster of the HD? I don't think copying the files directly onto the HD would work?

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/download.php?id=3232

Edited August 24, 2006 by dhruba.bandopadhyay

[jaclaz]

You use the SYS command (or if you have already FDISKED the Hard Disk but haven't yet FORMATted it you use FORMAT /S):

http://www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm#02

http://www.computerhope.com/syshlp.htm

http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

http://www.computerhope.com/formathl.htm

jaclaz

[Andromeda43]

What I want to know is how to install this MS-DOS into a blank C:\ ?

That's what the Format command is for.

From your boot disk, either floppy or CD, just type:

Format C: /s

and the format command will format C: and install the system (boot) files for you.

Then you can just copy any files you want on C: from the boot disk.

Cheers!

Andromeda43 B)