The only CD I've ever used to install DOS is FreeDOS.

If you are talking about warez compilations of MS-DOS then yes those are out there.....but we don't talk about such things here.

I did have my Dos folder backed up on a cd just copy the folder on a newly formatted drive. That worked for 2 PC’s the only difference was sound drivers. The rest like Network, CD-ROM, Mouse drivers were all the same anyway.
Windows 3.11 was also on the CD so no more feeding disks but never worried about windows most times.

I don’t bother now as I mostly copy the folder to a different partition then back again once done
That initial finding and configuring the drivers just right is half the fun!

Well I was mainly talking about the various DOS utilities and drivers out there, and since we're talking CD's here I also figured a couple of versions of DOS as well but you're right, that would still be warez 😀 I'm fine with a CD with just a collection of drivers&utils.
Well I can see how it would be fun but I don't have a PC with both a floppy drive AND acces to internet anymore so if I want to try a couple of different drivers I'd have to download them on one PC, put them on a USB stick, then go to my win98 PC and copy them to a floppy. Too much work for me which is why I decided to check if perhaps someone made a compilation CD already. 😁

I once tried to make an installation CD out of my Dos 6.22 floppies, for convenience on machines with a bootable cd.

I could not make it happen though, iirc the main reason was that each floppy contains a DISK.ID file. This file has the same name on each floppy but the content is a unique ID for each disk. This means you cannot copy the content of all the disks to the same location without overwriting the DISK.ID

The installation looks for the DISK.ID to know if it has the right floppy so it is necessary.

A possible solution would be to have a partition image of an already installed DOS and make a live cd (Some light linux distro likely ) that would format your Hard drive and apply the Partition image. I did not venture further in this direction outside thinking about it.

I like Chinny's easy solution but does not that also involve making the primary partition bootable through manual mean?

j'ordos wrote:

download them on one PC, put them on a USB stick, then go to my win98 PC and copy them to a floppy.

There are DOS drivers for USB sticks, though they don't always work for all chipsets. Failing that, a Linux boot CD ought to work; it would have access to both the USB stick and your hard drive – but finding one that would work within the limited constraints of your DOS PC might be tricky.

MaxWar wrote:

I like Chinny's easy solution but does not that also involve making the primary partition bootable through manual mean?

It should just be a simple matter of running "sys c:" from a bootable MS-DOS floppy.

Jorpho wrote:

It should just be a simple matter of running "sys c:" from a bootable MS-DOS floppy.

You are right, wow this truly is a simple and easy solution. I think im gonna do that in the future.

1.Partition your drive
2. Boot from a DOS floppy with cd drivers.
3. Run sys c: Copy the folders from cd to c:\
DONE

Thank you thread! 😁

I do this with my CF cards. Just got to make sure that you include hidden and system files. I make backups through a CF card reader on my desktop and if something goes wrong I just copy everything over, boot from a floppy, do sys C: and all is good again.

I've been wrestling with getting a microdrive to boot now for hours.... 😵

And finally gave up the idea of just copying a full install from another hdd to the preformatted microdrive... sigh... whatever I did I could NOT for the life of me get the drive to actually boot off the copied install.

(files reads fine, blah blah etc, but it just hung after post was finished)

Now then, bitterly disappointed, I figured the only way from here would be old school full install, and I THOUGHT I had been smart and had 'backed up'(?) DOS floppies to a diff computer, and then just copy that back onto some empty floppies if I ever(like now, apparantly) needed to install them again.

But the setup disk will just not BOOT. I then manually run setup.exe, and it tells me too reboot... <facepalm>
So there's obviously a trick I'm overlooking when either creating those backups (just a plain copy of all files in 3 folders, incl hidden ones!, on winXP) or when making the 'new' copies.

Final soloution, I had to go and DIG up the original DOS floppies...ack
Now finally they boot, and (expecting yet another failure) the microdrive actually boots as well after install !!!

***

Any comments on making this easier, or where I went wrong, would be apprectiated.

- Is there a special way to archive those DOS floppies ?
(I mean, they had all the necessary files, autoexec etc, but no booting for me)

I DID test with a regular (non-micro)hdd earlier, just copied the whole DOS install from a working one, then back onto the target hdd, and it boots NO PROBLEM!
Why the difference - is beyond me atm (to tired to google a single page more, blargh 😜 )

PS:
I noticed the sys c: command beeing mentioned ion above postes, one doing it pre-copy.

BUT... I did NOT do that with the (in-)direct copy of full install from 1 hdd to the 2nd(both full size 3,5''), and it still worked/booted, so.... (?)
😕
Is that really needed in such cases?

PPS:
regarding the non-booting archived floppies:
aah, maybe I have to turn ON the S attribute(with attrib +S) on the existing system files ? They
(Unless I do the "sys a:" on a suitable PC first)

bestemor wrote:

- Is there a special way to archive those DOS floppies ?
(I mean, they had all the necessary files, autoexec etc, but no booting for me)

But of course – you wouldn't image a CD by copying all the files off of it, and that's not the proper way to backup a floppy either. The critical thing is the boot sector, which is not normally accessible by any standard file-manipulation utility.

There are many utilities for creating images of floppies; Winimage is frequently mentioned, but it's shareware and you're supposed to pay for it. So I recommend RawWriteWin. DiskExplorer is also useful for manipulation of images.

BUT... I did NOT do that with the (in-)direct copy of full install from 1 hdd to the 2nd(both full size 3,5''), and it still worked/booted, so.... (?)
😕
Is that really needed in such cases?

It's hard to say without knowing more about exactly what you did and what was on the hard drive.

Oh, floppy boot sector.... 😅

Well, I did a post mortem "sys a:" on the offending disk, with old files and all, and no visible changes, but NOW it boots just fine!

As for the disk-2-disk copy, all I did was:
- prepare disk, as in partition and format, setting active partition etc
- copy all files(via Explorer) from another disk wich has DOS pre-installed/working to primary partition on disk2
..done

To make it boot use SYS C: and/or FDISK / MBR from a Boot Floppy.

That usually does the trick.

Once you have DOS installed on one machine, can you do a network install if you need to install it on another machine?

bestemor wrote:

- prepare disk, as in partition and format, setting active partition etc

It is possible to use a format operation to render a disk bootable, depending on how you did it.

FORMAT C: /S /Q

😉

If I remember this correctly, I just used Powerquest PartitionMagic in XP.
(2 partitions, 1 set active, this was a few years ago..)
And then copied the files...

I must admit I've never really used DOS commands much for these types of things, though having some vague memories about fiddling with autoexec.bat etc many moons ago.
Thanks for all the command tips though! 😎

And no, there is no network in place, just a bare mobo on cardboard so far... (and my networking skills are... well, non-existant)

***

But now that we are booting, the real problem is to get DOS to recognize/create/make a second/logical partion on my 2,5gb microdrive.... which so far has proved impossible... ack 😒