MS-DOS Disks to CD-ROM transfer

[peter1066]

Hi,
I have a laptop with a formatted hard drive - no floppy- and want to burn my set of 3 DOS 6.22 floppies to a CD-ROM and install, DOS 6.22. I have succeeded in burning the first disk1 as a .ISO image(Roxio) and can start the install procedure but not sure how to continue with the remaining Disks 2 and 3. I tried adding Disk 2 contents to the same CDROM but the installation process stops when  it gets to "insert Disk 2 and press enter"  stage. Maybe I need to burn 3 separate  CD-ROMs and would they all need to be bootable .ISO images?
Anyone help, maybe there's another way around it??

Peter 1066

[foxidrive]

Create a bootable cdrom image of MSDOS V 6.22 with sys.com and assuming the image boots up to A: and the HDD is C: (and is formatted and marked 'active') then use this command to transfer the boot files to the C: drive:

SYS a: c:

then just copy the MSDOS files into C:\DOS
Maybe you can find them on the Net.

Then create and adjust your autoexec.bat and config.sys files

Either way, it's not a batch file issue.

[BC_Programmer]

Create a bootable cdrom image of MSDOS V 6.22 with sys.com

He already did. Setup disk one has sys.com.

SYS a: c:

This would give a too many parameters error. sys only accepts a target drive.

then just copy the MSDOS files into C:\DOS
Maybe you can find them on the Net.

Or they could find them on their setup disks.

Either way, it's not a batch file issue.

Nobody said anything about batch files.



Anyway, the main issue here is that the DOS setup (iirc) goes by volume label. Best approximation would as you considered, actually use a complete disc for each floppy (with the appropriate label) in addition to the use of a CD-ROM driver on the first one to get access to the drive. (the second two would not need to be bootable, btw).

If you have another machine with a working install of DOS, you can pretty much do as foxidrive suggested and transfer the boot files to the hard drive (so it starts up). HOWEVER one connotation of this is that you have to copy the CD-ROM driver file(s) over and get autoexec and .config.sys working with it, so that you can copy the rest of the DOS system. Copying from the floppies if I recall consists of using a "extract" program that decompresses the file. Example, find.exe is actually find.ex_ on one of the disks, and to get it on your hard drive would mean using extract. Of course there are "shady" ways to get the files, but that sort of defeats the intent with having the floppies to begin with.

[foxidrive]

This would give a too many parameters error. sys only accepts a target drive.

Au contraire.  It accepts source and target.

Or they could find them on their setup disks.

True, if they can extract all the files.  It'd be easier to find a repository of them.

[foxidrive]

Nobody said anything about batch files.

Yes, that was my mistake.  I thought this subforum was related to batch files but I can see now that it's MSdos-anything.

[peter1066]

Hi,
Thanks for suggestions. I do have access to the laptop CD-ROM - have also  managed to create a CD with FDISK/FORMAT on which boots up.

>actually use a complete disc for each floppy (with the appropriate label)<
>use of a CD-ROM driver on the first one to get access to the drive. (the second two would not need to be bootable<

I'll try the 3 separate CDs route first - I have already got the first one working and starts the install process.

I do have another machine which is dual boot DOS/XP so will try the suggestion of using 3 CD separate CD initally.

I do have a another machine which has dual boot DOS/XP so I could investigate that later - nor sure I understand the full implications of how to do that yet - a  bit early in the morning at present.

Peter

[BC_Programmer]

Au contraire.  It accepts source and target.

So it does. Though arguably in this case specifying a source is probably redundant.

True, if they can extract all the files.  It'd be easier to find a repository of them.

Turns out the program is expand, not extract; (extract is the program for the same purpose provided with windows).

With each disk, one could do this command with each floppy/disk contents, after setting up the basic DOS system on C: and copying EXPAND.EXE as well as getting a working setup for the CD-ROM drive with the driver and MSCDEX:

Code: [Select]

expand -r A:\*.??_ C:\DOS


We want a basic DOS setup with CD-ROM support. you can get this with the first disk, which you have successfully used. You will also need a CD-ROM driver. My personal favourite is OAKCDROM.SYS. You will need to run the sys command on the hard disk, create a DOS folder, and copy over MSCDEX.EXE and the CD-ROM driver (which is not on the disk, this will need to be acquired separately). You will also want to copy EXPAND.EXE to the DOS HD directory. CONFIG.SYS and autoexec.bat should be created on the HD looking like this:

CONFIG.SYS

Code: [Select]

DEVICE=C:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:OAKCD
PATH=C:\DOS
autoexec.bat

Code: [Select]

MSCDEX /D:OAKCD

With a basic setup this ought to boot fine. You should then be able to run EXPAND on the contents of each disk. This means you could easily just throw the contents of disk 2 and 3 onto the same image as a subdirectory (eg. DISK1 and DISK2) since the volume label is only needed by the setup program and this is essentially a manual install.

Then you just expand the files in each directory in the CD-R:

Code: [Select]

EXPAND -r D:\*.??_ C:\DOS\
EXPAND -r D:\DISK1\*.??_ C:\DOS\
EXPAND -r D:\DISK2\*.??_ C:\DOS\

This will expand the compressed files, You might want to look through them for the uncompressed equivalents, (since a few files are not compressed) and copy those over manually. After which, you should have DOS installed.

[foxidrive]

According to Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/80751

Although the MS-DOS asterisk (*) and question mark (?) wildcards are not supported by the EXPAND command

You can't use wildcards.

[BC_Programmer]

(run while in the source folder)

Code: [Select]

for %P in (*.??_) do expand -r %P C:\DOS


[foxidrive]

(run while in the source folder)

Code: [Select]

for %P in (*.??_) do expand -r %P C:\DOS


You will get a syntax error with that command as according to the MSdos V6.22 help there are no switches in expand syntax.

[BC_Programmer]

You will get a syntax error with that command as according to the MSdos V6.22 help there are no switches in expand syntax.

I was basing it on a direct expand /? from a DOS 6.22 system.


However, I have windows 3.1 installed there as well, which puts the windows folder first in the path, so this expand.exe is in fact expand.exe from windows 3.1.

Not that it's particularly difficult to workaround, though.

Code: [Select]

expand A:\*.ex_ C:\DOS
ren C:\DOS\*.ex_ C:\DOS\*.exe

of course this would have to be done with each file mapping (ex_ to exe, here, 38_ to 386, HL_ to HLP, OV_ to OVL, DL_ to DLL.

It's a good thing some of us are looking for solutions rather than problems.

[foxidrive]

Code: [Select]

expand A:\*.ex_ C:\DOS
ren C:\DOS\*.ex_ C:\DOS\*.exe

of course this would have to be done with each file mapping (ex_ to exe, here, 38_ to 386, HL_ to HLP, OV_ to OVL, DL_ to DLL.

It's a good thing some of us are looking for solutions rather than problems.

So.  Who's solution is far easier to use - yours, which still requires a lot more work to fully implement, or copying the files from a repository?  Perfectly legal as you have the source disks.

Maybe you should take your sig quote to heart...

[BC_Programmer]

So.  Who's solution is far easier to use - yours, which still requires a lot more work to fully implement, or copying the files from a repository?

Neither. The only difference is where the unexpanded files are sourced.