Your computer can only boot from the floppy or primary HDD. I don't think you need to boot into the install disc, so try downloading a boot floppy from bootdisk.com.

Sorry I didn't understand what you meant bucket. What can I do if I want to format c: and install DOS 6.22?

Not sure you can boot dos from a cd.

To install dos to a cf card, get an ide adapter to plug the card into your ide port on the motherboard as you first hard drive. Some ide adapters hold 1 cf drive and the drive can be set as master or slave, others can hold 2 cf drives and one will be master and the other slave.

Use the bios to set up the drive geometry if necessary [various threads on here discuss that] - this is not necessary on later boards [at least my socket 7 detected my cf drives fine].

At this point you should have a cf drive set up as as c:.

Use dos floppies to install dos to this c: drive.

CF should work just fine.

To boot from CD there are software solutions available I believe. Just don't ask me what they are called, my memory is letting me down...

no 486 I know of can boot from CD-ROM, ZIP drive, or LS-120 drive.... the BIOS is just too old
the only things you can boot are Floppy, HDD, or SCSI device... SCSI depends on having a SCSI BIOS either built into the motherboard (rare) or if the addon card has a BIOS
some SCSI2 cards with BIOS and pretty much anything SCSI3 and newer can boot anything pretty much.... SCSI floppy drives, SCSI optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, MO disk, etc)

if you want to boot a CD, you'll need a boot strapper... software solution as said, or use SCSI

To boot a CDROM on a 486, I used a bootable floppy with a bootstrap called Smart Boot Manager. I'm sure it can be installed onto the hard disk as well.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

swaaye wrote:

To boot a CDROM on a 486, I used a bootable floppy with a bootstrap called Smart Boot Manager. I'm sure it can be installed onto the hard disk as well.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/btmgr/

Great app, I'll check it out!