> bare bones, but does it all
> looking for things like...

That's not how the world works. Bare bones means bare bones, adding stuff like extra drivers makes it not bare bones any more.

And you need to be more specific about devices what you want supported, exactly. Like, "USB drive support" - is that flash drives, or also external HDDs, and how about USB DVD drives? Maybe even a ZIP drive? CD-ROM support - any specific models, or just include one generic driver and hope for the best? Two? Three? MS's boot disks come with multiple, probably for a reason.

> sits at a [prompt], which I can't seem to figure out how to change that time frame

Well, if that's all that's stopping you from using that floppy... A (mostly) normal Windows boot disk you say? Then config.sys, line 5 ("menudefault=SETUP_CD,30"), change that "30" to e.g. "5" to go from 30 to 5 seconds. ez-pz.

> that I can burn to a floppy

Not sure when that started but you don't "burn" things to a floppy. They're magnetic storage.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 17:57:

And you need to be more specific about devices what you want supported, exactly. Like, "USB drive support" - is that flash drives, or also external HDDs, and how about USB DVD drives? Maybe even a ZIP drive? CD-ROM support - any specific models, or just include one generic driver and hope for the best? Two? Three? MS's boot disks come with multiple, probably for a reason.

Wow. Is the sarcasm turned up in this thread, or is it just me? Jeez man, did I hit a nerve or something? Was not my intention in doing so. But your right, I wasn't as spessific as I could have been, and I appreciate you pointing that out to me.

When I used the term bare bones, I meant deleting some things that aren't exactly needed. Things like qbasic.exe, or the hlp file, or edit.hlp. But to add some important things, like, and yes I did mean, a large reaching CD-ROM file that could work on multiple systems. Something like SHCDX33F.exe, which I have also fooled around with but have had no success with it as of so far. By using the term slim I meant to have the size optimized for extra space for other programs, like Xfdisk or something along those lines. And yes I did mean USB flash drives, which to my understanding need to be formatted in FAT as DOS won't read anything else.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 17:57:

>Not sure when that started but you don't "burn" things to a floppy. They're magnetic storage.

Thank you very much for the technical explanation. What I was asking for is if anyone had a IMG file that they could post and I could write it to a floppy using WinImage. But that was what I was getting towards. I have done some looking on bootdisk.com and other places, but none of them seem to have a premade image file that could easily be written with everything premade.

I hope I had made myself more clear with this post. Do let me know if I need to make any further clarifications.

Right.

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself. Since the admins make sure that there wil be no pirating of copyrighted software on this forum, all anyone'll be able to point you to is FreeDOS. Enjoy. (And I'm only being half sarcastic here - their offerings are pretty great... But not always 100% compatible, and still need customizations of course).

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:41:

Right.

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself. Since the admins make sure that there wil be no pirating of copyrighted software on this forum, all anyone'll be able to point you to is FreeDOS. Enjoy.

All OP has to do is make a copy of his win98 with USB bootdisk and edit some parts of it, with the information that you've given'm.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:41:

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself.

Well, I don't think that's completely fair. Your suggestion above about editing the config.sys worked, and I was able to cut that time down. Thanks for the help, by the way. But without doing the legwork is not exactly correct, I would do it if I knew how to do it. Hance, why I've made a post. But I have seemed to step on a land mine here with you that was not intentional. So I will step back and try to figure it out myself. I will start with looking at FreeDOS. Thanks for your help.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-27, 22:04:

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:41:

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself.

Well, I don't think that's completely fair. Your suggestion above about editing the config.sys worked, and I was able to cut that time down. Thanks for the help, by the way. But without doing the legwork is not exactly correct, I would do it if I knew how to do it. Hance, why I've made a post. But I have seemed to step on a land mine here with you that was not intentional. So I will step back and try to figure it out myself. I will start with looking at FreeDOS. Thanks for your help.

Not sure what the above aggro is about but try to not let it tarnish the rest of us here, not all of us behave like that to new people.

you could download a Bootdisk from here https://www.allbootdisks.com/index.html and then tailor it to your needs, I think the basic DOS 6.22 Boot disk should fit your needs, if you need DOS USB support then you will likely have to add this in yourself, same for other drivers that are not CD.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/usb_support.php is a good place to start to get USB support in DOS, the Dosdays site is an excellent resource so have a good look around there.

MODS - Not sure about the legality of Bootdisks or sharing sites that offer them so if it breaks any Vogons rules then just delete the post. The site above only offers Bootdisks, nothing else.

Boot disks are kind of fun to create and optimize (or maybe thats just me) as they are self contained.

How I did it when first starting out was create a blank boot disk (format a: /s)
Create a new blank autoexec.bat and config.sys on the disk.
Copy the lines (and relevant files) from your existing boot disk that you know what they do
Then slowly copy line by line anything else, the error messages will let you know what the file does or requires.
This is how I learnt qbasic is needed for edit.com, but only for the dos versions not Dos 7/Win9x

If the disk you're using doesn't already decompress to a RAM disk, you might try that technique.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:41:

Right.

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself. Since the admins make sure that there wil be no pirating of copyrighted software on this forum, all anyone'll be able to point you to is FreeDOS. Enjoy. (And I'm only being half sarcastic here - their offerings are pretty great... But not always 100% compatible, and still need customizations of course).

Good job scaring them away. Classic VOGONS experience, right there!

Personally, I like the disk described here: REMOVED

It provides an interactive menu to select what options you want.

Direct link: REMOVED

I see that the mods continue to be paranoid about 30-year-old software (abandoned by its parent company for 25+ years), and to continue the good fight at removing helpful, useful posts and links. A shame, but, then, thankfully, there are other places that are not so officious.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-27, 22:20:

Not sure what the above aggro is about but try to not let it tarnish the rest of us here, not all of us behave like that to new people.

I'm so glad to hear that. I have no idea what the argument is about either! 🤣 I'll just chauk it up to the guy was having a bad day, and I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I must had tripped a boobie trap somehow, and I'm not quite sure how. But to throw a personal insult and call me lazy... Not cool man. Just... yeah, just not cool.

But anywho, back to what this thread is about. Trashbytes had the right idea. I started off at allbootdisks.com with the Win 98 without RAM Disk. I found that I didn't need it, as I did covered USB flash drivers watching this video here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_cnTc9mMnpA

Not only did it find my USB flash drive, but it found my flashdrive formated in Fat16, which blew my mind. I then added ctmouse.exe to add my mouse on my mousepad (more on that later).

But then I discovered that I didn't have any sound drivers when booting into DOS. I looked it up and found that my Compaq Armada 1750 has a ES1869 sound card. So I did some looking, found some drivers on archive.org (which is becoming the best place for drivers now days, by the way), downloaded it, copied it off of my Fat32 USB 3.0 thumb drive (is this even real!?) And added it to my autoexect.bat.

The problem I'm running into are two fold. One is I've still not had any luck with SHCDX33F.exe. I've added it to my autoexet.bat and config.sys with some tutorials I've seen online, but no one seems to point out exactly what you need to do. Has anyone here have experience with that?

But the second half is a big one. I borrowed my dad's mouse with a PS2 to USB adapter. When I boot my laptop into DOS and move my mouse it constantly beeps. And because my autoexet auto loads Norton Commander, it presses random button presses. In Win98 it does the same. In Win98 it has to look for drivers on the Win98 CD, but it eventually works. If I plug the USB mouse strait into the only port it has, no beeping and nothing happens. In Win98 it scans for drivers off of the Win98 CD and it works great. Am I missing a proper driver? Thanks for your help guys.

And by the way, I didn't know that sharing boot floppy images was still a dicy thing. I don't want to promote piracy or spark a debate. Sorry if I've opened a can of worms 🤷

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:25:

The problem I'm running into are two fold. One is I've still not had any luck with SHCDX33F.exe. I've added it to my autoexet.bat and config.sys with some tutorials I've seen online, but no one seems to point out exactly what you need to do. Has anyone here have experience with that?

What do you mean ?

zyzzle wrote on 2023-12-28, 20:34:

I see that the mods continue to be paranoid about 30-year-old software (abandoned by its parent company for 25+ years), and to continue the good fight at removing helpful, useful posts and links. A shame, but, then, thankfully, there are other places that are not so officious.

Vogons doesn't have a choice, all it takes is for one person out there to still have a stake in that bit of IP and they can cause a world of trouble for Vogons and its Owner, Vogons isn't run by some huge parent company that can throw a legal team at such situations and make them go away so I get why they can seem a bit over zealous about policing links.

As you said there are other places to go for that.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2023-12-28, 12:05:

elszgensa wrote on 2023-12-27, 21:41:

Right.

So you just want a tailored download without doing any legwork yourself. Since the admins make sure that there wil be no pirating of copyrighted software on this forum, all anyone'll be able to point you to is FreeDOS. Enjoy. (And I'm only being half sarcastic here - their offerings are pretty great... But not always 100% compatible, and still need customizations of course).

Good job scaring them away. Classic VOGONS experience, right there!

I will never understand people who behave that way to new posters asking genuine questions, does Vogons not want new members who could potentially bring fresh knowledge here ?

If you have a usable Linux system (a Linux VM will also do), it's very trivial to mount floppy images r/w and do the modifications you want. You can start with a simple (SYS'd) or default boot floppy of your favorite DOS.

Floppy drives are slow by nature, as the interfaces were designed that way. Even Gotek has to conform to such speed limitations in order to work properly. If you want something fast you can rely on GRUB4DOS to boot images stored on your hard disk. That way you're not bound by floppy drive speed. GRUB4DOS can be launched not only from DOS but also from Windows Boot Manager (NTLDR/BOOTMGR).

And for FreeDOS, there's something worth noting: Unlike classic DOS kernels (MS, PC, DR, etc.), GRUB4DOS can boot a FreeDOS kernel directly, which means in a multiboot scenario, you don't even have to install FreeDOS at all. Just deploy the kernel, the applications you want, and startup configurations, and you're good to go.

PS: A long time ago I used to rely on pre-made floppy images found online, as I lacked knowledge and tools to make them myself. I don't need to look for such anymore now that I've acquired the necessary knowledge and tools to build my own. There are a lot of things to consider when building floppy images. You need to carefully consider what functions you need and want, as well as how much memory and disk space these functions will take, since floppy image space and conventional (as well as upper) memory are very limited.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:25:

But then I discovered that I didn't have any sound drivers when booting into DOS. I looked it up and found that my Compaq Armada 1750 has a ES1869 sound card. So I did some looking, found some drivers on archive.org (which is becoming the best place for drivers now days, by the way), downloaded it, copied it off of my Fat32 USB 3.0 thumb drive (is this even real!?) And added it to my autoexect.bat.

Sound Blaster-compatible sound cards don't use a driver. Each DOS game that makes sound talks to the hardware directly. "Jumperless" sound cards (whether Plug and Play or configuration burned into EEPROM) do need a configuration utility. It sounds like you found ESSCFG. You might look at UNISOUND (free, by a vogons poster) which is even better and works with many more sound cards.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:25:

The problem I'm running into are two fold. One is I've still not had any luck with SHCDX33F.exe. I've added it to my autoexet.bat and config.sys with some tutorials I've seen online, but no one seems to point out exactly what you need to do. Has anyone here have experience with that?

Without knowing how much background you have in DOS CD-ROM drivers, it comes in two parts. One is a .SYS file specific to your CD-ROM drive that goes in CONFIG.SYS. Before IDE (ATAPI) CD-ROM drives this was highly specific to your sound card/drive, but now it will be something standard like OAKCDROM (which shipped with Win98), XCDROM, etc. The second half goes in AUTOEXEC.BAT which is MSCDEX or in your case, SHCDX33F. The same /D:MSCD000 (or any other name you desire) switch must be passed to both parts.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:25:

But the second half is a big one. I borrowed my dad's mouse with a PS2 to USB adapter. When I boot my laptop into DOS and move my mouse it constantly beeps. And because my autoexet auto loads Norton Commander, it presses random button presses. In Win98 it does the same. In Win98 it has to look for drivers on the Win98 CD, but it eventually works. If I plug the USB mouse strait into the only port it has, no beeping and nothing happens. In Win98 it scans for drivers off of the Win98 CD and it works great. Am I missing a proper driver? Thanks for your help guys.

PS/2 to USB mouse adapters are completely passive and require the circuitry of the mouse to speak both protocols. If the adapter didn't ship with the mouse then this isn't surprising; if it did, perhaps try a different DOS mouse driver.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-29, 00:20:

Vogons doesn't have a choice

they absolutely do, they chose maximum risk aversion even though the risk is minimal

they of course have the right to make this choice, but to say they "have no choice" is absurd