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Custom made DOS boot floppies that support USB Flash stick / USB CD/DVD drives

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First post, by MRVFONE

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Hello all,

I built 2 custom Dos Boot floppy's that i thought may help other users.
The main aim was to enable a OS to be installed in DOS from a USB device. Eigher a USB Flash stick. OR an external USB CD/DVD drive. (For my x86 Tablet PCs that have NO Optical drives... BUT have USB ports V1.0)

I made 2 boot disks. First is a FAT16 Based Boot disk that will load an OS from a USB Flash stick OR a USB CD/DVD in REAL Dos mode.

The second boot disk is a FAT32 version. For installing like 98SE to a Native FAT32 HDD. Again the OS is loaded from a USB Flash stick or external USB CD/DVD drive.

BOTH disks have Dos utils to help setup the HDD etc (Fdisk, Format, NDD / Scandisk (FAT32) etc). So they can be used as "generic" boot disks for Dos or Win 98SE etc..

Both are 1.44mb Floppy IMAGE files. Just image to a 1.44 floppy.. and your good to go.

You can also copy the files from these disks and enable USB flash Stick OR USB CD/DVD rom drive on your current DOS / WIN98 SE Build / PC 😀 That's how i play my Dos CD based games on my x86 Tablet PCs.

Limitations!
NOT ALL USB Flash Sticks work in Dos. IF the boot disk detects the USB Device (And the flash stick is 2GB or Smaller) you will be OK.
MOST USB control chips should be fine. I have tested it with USB 1.0 and 1.1 ports on Several x86 Tablet PC from 486 To Pentium CPUs. USB 2.0 PCMCIA Cards work as well. But this will be a limit to the PCMCIA ChipSet and USB 2.0 PCMCIA Card you have.
Normal USB 2.0 ports will be fine as well.
But USB 3.0 is MEANT to be backward compatible with 1.0 ands 2.0. But i don't know / Haven't tried)

Enjoy!

T.

Reply 1 of 3, by MRVFONE

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UPDATE! USB 2.0 PCMCIA cards are more compatible with USB sticks in DOS than the USB 1.0 port I have been using to test them. So if your having issues not finding any 2GB or lower USB sticks that work in DOS. As long as you have 1 x PCMCIA port / slot. Grab a USB 2.0 Card and see how you go.

Reply 2 of 3, by Harry Potter

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I also have two DOS boot disks for Win98SE in DOS mode. I mainly made them because, for a while, my Win98SE tower at my mother's house was not booting in Windows mode properly. Thanks to help from the people here, I got it working again. One disk was a work disk so I can play games or use applications, while the other was to use flash drives. I needed the latter, as the USB driver didn't like EMS on my system. I still have the disks and may use the former again, as I can't seem to get UMBs or EMS in Windows. If you want, the next time I'm at my mother's house, I can post my configs.

Joseph Rose, a.k.a. Harry Potter
Working magic in the computer community

Reply 3 of 3, by MRVFONE

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I have been doing USB in real Dos mode for ages now. Once you get it all setup.. its rock solid. Plus its super handy to use a USB stick like a floppy drive. 😀

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