brostenen wrote on 2020-12-28, 09:17:

Loading another OS from Dos is not a new idea. That was how Novell Netware was launched, as far as I remember. I have not used the server system, since 1995. Back then I was given the task of installing it on a 486, because a sadistic boss. I was studying computing and the boss thought that just because we (my fellow students at the internship) knew how to install a CD drive in Dos, then we automatically knew everything about computing. So we were given the full set of manuals (motherload of paper) a set of install floppies and a computer that had to be build first.

What a freaking week....
The truth was, that we had no idea how this server system worked, and of course had never seen anything like the install process anywere else. We were not given any training, and all the manuals were in English only. F**king ducebag, the boss were.

I think the boss knew even less, so he delegated it to IT students. Smart move on his part.
So what did you learn from this debacle at the nuclear plant ?

Akuma wrote on 2020-12-28, 10:26:

brostenen wrote on 2020-12-28, 09:17:

Loading another OS from Dos is not a new idea. That was how Novell Netware was launched, as far as I remember. I have not used the server system, since 1995. Back then I was given the task of installing it on a 486, because a sadistic boss. I was studying computing and the boss thought that just because we (my fellow students at the internship) knew how to install a CD drive in Dos, then we automatically knew everything about computing. So we were given the full set of manuals (motherload of paper) a set of install floppies and a computer that had to be build first.

What a freaking week....
The truth was, that we had no idea how this server system worked, and of course had never seen anything like the install process anywere else. We were not given any training, and all the manuals were in English only. F**king ducebag, the boss were.

I think the boss knew even less, so he delegated it to IT students. Smart move on his part.
So what did you learn from this debacle at the nuclear plant ?

Well... I learned that Dos can have more than one function. I never learned Netware. We complained, on tuesday that we were unable to do it in one week. He told us to start reading the manual. On friday he was not at work, so we called it a day and went out to drink in the evening. On monday he screamed at us, and asked why it was not fully working with 50 user logins. We gave him the cold hard facts, that he told us to read the manual. And it became expensive for him to hire people who were able to install and set up up in a couple of days. Overtime pay is what a boss want to avoid paying. Not my problem, it just went on the list of complains for the workers union.

Minix and BEOS 5 Personal also hat the ability to boot from DOS.
If memory servers, Linux from the distant past also had the ability (1990s? linload? loadlin?).

Basic Linux 3.5 can be used in Dos on older systems http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ It also has the option to install on a formatted drive.

I might give it a go on my 386DX25 at some point.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-28, 19:56:

If memory servers, Linux from the distant past also had the ability (1990s? linload? loadlin?).

LOADLIN.
Very useful for those with sound cards that needed initialization by some DOS-only utility.

brostenen wrote on 2020-12-28, 12:58:

Akuma wrote on 2020-12-28, 10:26:

brostenen wrote on 2020-12-28, 09:17:

Loading another OS from Dos is not a new idea. That was how Novell Netware was launched, as far as I remember. I have not used the server system, since 1995. Back then I was given the task of installing it on a 486, because a sadistic boss. I was studying computing and the boss thought that just because we (my fellow students at the internship) knew how to install a CD drive in Dos, then we automatically knew everything about computing. So we were given the full set of manuals (motherload of paper) a set of install floppies and a computer that had to be build first.

What a freaking week....
The truth was, that we had no idea how this server system worked, and of course had never seen anything like the install process anywere else. We were not given any training, and all the manuals were in English only. F**king ducebag, the boss were.

I think the boss knew even less, so he delegated it to IT students. Smart move on his part.
So what did you learn from this debacle at the nuclear plant ?

Well... I learned that Dos can have more than one function. I never learned Netware. We complained, on tuesday that we were unable to do it in one week. He told us to start reading the manual. On friday he was not at work, so we called it a day and went out to drink in the evening. On monday he screamed at us, and asked why it was not fully working with 50 user logins. We gave him the cold hard facts, that he told us to read the manual. And it became expensive for him to hire people who were able to install and set up up in a couple of days. Overtime pay is what a boss want to avoid paying. Not my problem, it just went on the list of complains for the workers union.

That's too bad, its always nice to come out on top if you've been thrown into a difficult situation.

Every appliance with a screen must run DooM, not everything must run Linux.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-12-29, 09:05:

Every appliance with a screen must run DooM, not everything must run Linux.

Every appliance with a screen must run NetBSD, not everything must run Linux.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-28, 19:56:

Minix and BEOS 5 Personal also hat the ability to boot from DOS.
If memory servers, Linux from the distant past also had the ability (1990s? linload? loadlin?).

BeOS R3 and R4 use loadlin to be booted from DOS. A different utility was provided with R4.5 and R5.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-12-29, 09:05:

Every appliance with a screen must run DooM, not everything must run Linux.

What is DooM? Linux is kawl. I use it as a hardware tester so no Win9x/NTx drivers or reboots required.....

Can go back to 486 class systems using PLOP to boot the CD...

Grzyb wrote on 2020-12-28, 20:29:

Jo22 wrote on 2020-12-28, 19:56:

If memory servers, Linux from the distant past also had the ability (1990s? linload? loadlin?).

LOADLIN.
Very useful for those with sound cards that needed initialization by some DOS-only utility.

LOADLIN works to this day. Reclocking a C3 CPU via SETMUL also persists into the Linux session if you use LOADLIN, so bonus?

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-28, 20:21:

Basic Linux 3.5 can be used in Dos on older systems http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ It also has the option to install on a formatted drive.

It might be pedantic of me, but "used in" sounds to me like you're going to be "using" Linux while it's running "inside" DOS, but really I'm fairly sure you're just booting Linux from DOS, and Linux replaces DOS in memory. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Basic Linux does sound interesting though! Another similar solution is ZipSlack, which was Slackware Linux designed to fit on a FAT-formatted Zip disk. Back in the 1990s I found it a nice way to play with Linux without having to shrink my FAT filesystem to make way for an ext2 partition, although I eventually just added an old drive that I could format as ext2.

ZipSlack used UMSDOS, where Linux used your FAT filesystem for its root filesystem - it used a special file in each directory to store the long filenames, ownership and permissions, etc. - whereas Basic Linux's page says it uses a "loop file" which I'm fairly sure means the Linux root filesystem is contained in a disk image which can live in your FAT filesystem.