Re: Off-topic: Enhanced DOS

[ajx jxz@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia M Godfrey wrote:

> .. Use the
> startup disk to create any DOS partitions you want, leaving
> the rest of the disk free for your other opsys-partitions.
> Format, install Windows, then boot to DOS, copy everything
> in \Windows\commmand to the root, and DELTree everything
> else. MSDOS 9x, sans GUI. You'll need to add the 16-bit
> CD-ROM drivers and a config.sys and autoexec.bat that call
> them, but I'm sure you're used to all that.
> Patricia

I'd agree, except that one can put more than one
interpretation on "boot to DOS". If the system's set up to
boot a previous version of Dos which can't handle
fat32/disks over 2Gb, then the whole of the disk will be
unreadable to it. It won't even boot.

For Patricia's method to work, I believe you have to run
windows (a first time at least) and tell it to reboot to
its embedded Dos. The easiest and normal way to do that is
to create a batch file, alter its properties (right click
on its icon, Properties, Advanced, tailor config.sys and
autoexec.bat to your needs, as Patricia says), then launch
that. The advantage is access to large, fat32, disks under
(a limited) Dos.

Thereafter you'll stay in that Dos, over as many reboots as
you want, until you type "exit" at the dos prompt - when
you'll get a possibility of returning to Windows. But it's
important to get the contents of config.sys and
autoexec.bat on the one hand, and the batch file on the
other, correct before booting Dos - because Windows only
allows fairly symbolic versions of config.sys and
autoexec.bat. (It'll overwrite any later alterations if
you restart it.)


There's one small point concerning booting earlier versions
of dos arising from recent mails. It is that many
old-fashioned Doses have a bug in their boot code which
forbids them booting if their partition is located more
than 2 Gb from the origin of the disk. (Whether it's the
start or end of the partition that counts escapes me for
the moment.) But there are patches available to correct the
bug. I routinely boot to Msdos 6 on a partition located
after another which is 4 Gb in size. If anyone wants
details, why don't they contact me off-list?

When upgrading an old system to try and get access to large
disks, there are several limits waiting to foil the
attempt. One is the bios - which may have a size limit.
Another is the opsys - ditto. A third is the distance from
the start of the disk of the partition to boot (but what
the outer limit is, I don't know). The steps in
dos/windows' evolution up the scale of hard disk size are,
IIRC, 511 Mb, 2Gb, 8Gb, 40Gb ..

John

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