Off topic: enhanced DOS

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan wrote, "your `plain vanilla' DOS disk for booting purposes was
the W98
Emergency Recovery Diskette."
Actually, it wasn't. I always keep a couple of copies of that to hand,
but I also make and keep handy another boot disk. Formatted and sys'd,
with the following files:

COMMAND COM    93,890 04-23-99 10:22p COMMAND.COM
SCANDISK EXE    143,818 04-23-99 10:22p SCANDISK.EXE
CHKDSK  EXE    28,096 04-23-99 10:22p CHKDSK.EXE
DOSKEY  COM    15,495 04-23-99 10:22p DOSKEY.COM
EXTRACT EXE    93,242 04-23-99 10:22p EXTRACT.EXE
FDISK  EXE    63,916 04-23-99 10:22p FDISK.EXE
FORMAT  COM    49,575 04-23-99 10:22p FORMAT.COM
MEM   EXE    32,146 04-23-99 10:22p MEM.EXE
MSCDEX  EXE    25,473 04-23-99 10:22p MSCDEX.EXE
ATTRIB  EXE    15,252 04-23-99 10:22p ATTRIB.EXE
SYS   COM    18,967 04-23-99 10:22p SYS.COM
XCOPY  EXE     3,878 04-23-99 10:22p XCOPY.EXE
XCOPY32 EXE     3,878 04-23-99 10:22p XCOPY32.EXE
XCOPY32 MOD    41,472 04-23-99 10:22p XCOPY32.MOD
MORE   COM    10,471 04-23-99 10:22p MORE.COM
CONFIG  SYS      412 08-27-03 3:04p CONFIG.SYS
AUTOEXEC BAT      73 08-27-03 3:07p AUTOEXEC.BAT
OAKCDROM SYS    41,302 04-23-99 10:22p OAKCDROM.SYS

Also HIMEM.SYS, which I forgot to put on that one, and usually a handy
util called VIEW.COM (like LIST, but not as good, but much smaller). The
config.sys and autoexec.bat files load HIMEM and the CD drivers. No
FAT-32 IFS filter that I can see. I keep such a disk for when I want to
boot to DOS without starting Win, and don't want to take a chance on not
being quick enough to hit F8 in time. So I think that MSDOS9x (let's for
clarity refer to the DOS underlying Windows thus: MSDOS 95a, 95b, 95c,
98a, 98b; if we're talking about any non MS DOS, let's specify. OK?) is
enough Windows to see and handle FAT32. After all, that's what one uses
to partition and format the disk before installing Win. In fact, IIRC
from my last orgy of installing, if the drive/partition isn't formatted,
Win won't install. So FDISK has to see the whole drive to format it.
	It occurs to me that you're running other opsyses, so you must have a
boot manager of some sort. THAT of itself, regardless of the size of the
drive, can prevent a boot from MS DOS from reading the drive. We had a
drive of, oh, I think 100 Mb at the EFA once that had to be partitioned
(Partition Magic) to run DOS 5 and Win 3.1 on one partition and Win 95 on
another. Two C: drives, neither visible from the other.

	"Ttry booting real DOS from a floppy, then run Xy from floppy, and tell
me what you can see on your hard drive." Will do, but Xy 4 won't fit on a
floppy (well, I actually used to have a stripped down version that did,
but that was when Xy was almost the only app I used, and I better
recalled all the keystrokes). Will try it from a ZIP disk, which I've
been meaning to create with Carl's Portable setup. (Come to think of it,
this PC is supposed to be able to boot from a ZIP disk, and I have an
internal ZIP drive.) But what do you mean by "real DOS"? MSDOS 9x is REAL
DOS. It's the Windows sludge that's the add-on. Of course DOS 6.x cannot
see FAT32, since it didn't exist then. But MSDOS 9x can, as far as I can
see.

Novel is no go. Tried on two fat 32 PCs (one had a SCSI drive, so I
thought that might be the problem). Dir C: yields "Invalid drive." Pity,
that was a very nice opsys: protected mode capabilities, meaning it could
use all the RAM in a 386 or up. It was what TTG ran Xy on.

There is--or was--evidently something called Caldera DOS; my hard drive
utils from Western Digital use it to boot. But Caldera was bought out by
SCO, who is now trying to make anyone running any flavor of *nix (Linux
included and the FSF must be screaming) pay it royalties.
Patricia