Sowden wrote on 2023-12-27, 17:08:

Hey ho guys. So I have been looking for a good DOS floppy boot disk that does everything. I'm looking for things like mouse drivers, USB drive support, and CD-ROM support. I have one that does that, it's a Windows 98 boot disk with USB drivers added to it. But it takes around two minutes to boot. And if I step away from my laptop, it sits at a "Boot with CD-ROM Support" screen for 20 seconds, which I can't seem to figure out how to change that time frame. Does anyone have a link to a slim, only bare bones files, but does it all boot disk? Or even a img that I can burn to a floppy? Sorry if this has already been asked. I did a search but couldn't find anything. Thanks guys.

You might want to build the floppy yourself.

For MSDOS, you only need IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. The Seagate and Oak CDROM drivers work fine with about all IDE CDROM drives. And Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage driver is what you need for USB.

You might also want to add a bunch of MSDOS utilities, like FDISK, FORMAT etc.

The DOS USB drivers: https://winworldpc.com/product/dos-usb-support/1x
Windows 98 Boot floppy with CDROM drivers: https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-wind … boot-disk/98-se

maxtherabbit wrote on 2023-12-29, 15:03:

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

No they just went full Witcher, Lesser Evil, Greater evil, its all evil and if they had to make a choice they would rather not choose at all.

The illusion you seem have is that there was a choice, you cant just allow minor infractions of copyright, its treated the same as a major infraction and the courts fine you all the same for it.

I know you wont agree and that's ok I'm not here to change your mind, Vogons sets the rules . .end of story.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-31, 08:27:

its treated the same as a major infraction and the courts fine you all the same for it.

You are ignoring the salient point, which is *likelihood of enforcement*

That's all I have to say on the matter.

Sorry, hadn't been able to post for the last couple of days. Whoa theres a lot to respond to. Alright, lets try to get them all.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-28, 23:32:

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 autoexect.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 ?

So I found a video here that uses SHCDX33F.exe in his boot disk. In the video it loads the CDROM pretty damned quickly, so I wanted to try to get it to work. He eventually goes into is autoexect.bat and config.sys. And once I put in exactly what he has into my two files, the boot disk just stops booting. It says "Loading Windows 98" and goes no further. I'm not exactly sure why it is not loading properly, and I'm not sure how to proceed with this much further. But I will touch on my CDROM driver again below.

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-12-29, 02:17:

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).

Oh yeah, I used Grub4dos for a hot minute. It was when I attempted to install Windows XP on a flash drive and tried to boot off of that. I'm using Plpbt for booting right now and I love it. Maybe I'll give Grub4Dos another look.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-12-29, 02:33:

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.

Yes, I think the ESSCFG drivers works just fine with my Compaq laptop. I gave UNISOUND a try, but it came up with an error saying "No PnP card detected." Not really sure why its not working well for me, so I will go with the other ones instead.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2023-12-29, 02:33:

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.

Yes, I realized that config.sys and autoexec.bat work in tandem. I did end up finding a driver that worked for me though, and it is pretty speedy. I found Generic ATAPI CD-ROM Driver at this site that works as descried and is really easy to configure and drop in. I think I will be using this one going forward.

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.

I somehow worked around this issue. For some reason either I would unplug the adapter, plug it back in, or I would reset the laptop entierly and it would mostly solve the issue. It comes back every now or then, and I can't really find the rhyme or reason, so.... I dono

songoffall wrote on 2023-12-31, 05:45:

For MSDOS, you only need IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. The Seagate and Oak CDROM drivers work fine with about all IDE CDROM drives. And Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage driver is what you need for USB.

I tried the link that you posted, but I got errors while booting and I could not get it to work properly. I found a tutorial in a video here that showed me how to make it work using usbaspi.sys and NJ32DISK.SYS. And it even works with a FAT32 USB 3.0 flash drive, which is crazy to me.

Well, I think thats about everything that I wanted out of a master bootdisk, thanks to all of your guys help. I wanted to post all of this information since judging from the reading, it doesn't seem like a good idea to post an IMZ file of the floppy I've made. Let me know in case I'm wrong, but otherwise this has given me all that I've wanted. Thanks for your help guys.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-31, 21:47:

So I found a video here that uses SHCDX33F.exe in his boot disk. In the video it loads the CDROM pretty damned quickly, so I wanted to try to get it to work. He eventually goes into is autoexect.bat and config.sys. And once I put in exactly what he has into my two files, the boot disk just stops booting. It says "Loading Windows 98" and goes no further. I'm not exactly sure why it is not loading properly, and I'm not sure how to proceed with this much further. But I will touch on my CDROM driver again below.

Press F8 right before the "Loading Windows 98" appears, that should allow you to select Yes or No for each line to be executed or not. Do that and see on which line it actually hangs.

songoffall wrote on 2023-12-31, 05:45:

For MSDOS, you only need IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. The Seagate and Oak CDROM drivers work fine with about all IDE CDROM drives. And Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage driver is what you need for USB.

The disk must be first prepared using SYS command (or use FORMAT /S to make a clean one). This will install the necessary boot sector. From that point on you can add whatever component you need.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-31, 21:47:

So I found a video here that uses SHCDX33F.exe in his boot disk. In the video it loads the CDROM pretty damned quickly, so I wanted to try to get it to work. He eventually goes into is autoexect.bat and config.sys. And once I put in exactly what he has into my two files, the boot disk just stops booting. It says "Loading Windows 98" and goes no further. I'm not exactly sure why it is not loading properly, and I'm not sure how to proceed with this much further. But I will touch on my CDROM driver again below.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-12-31, 22:25:

Press F8 right before the "Loading Windows 98" appears, that should allow you to select Yes or No for each line to be executed or not. Do that and see on which line it actually hangs.

I recall Win98 had the startup wait time reduced significantly that a better way would be to hold CTRL while booting (you only need to release it once it entered the menu).

If nothing happens even when holding CTRL then something is wrong with the booting part (boot sector, IO.SYS).

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-31, 21:47:

Oh yeah, I used Grub4dos for a hot minute. It was when I attempted to install Windows XP on a flash drive and tried to boot off of that. I'm using Plpbt for booting right now and I love it. Maybe I'll give Grub4Dos another look.

I've been using Plop as a PXE ROM so it could permanently reside in BIOS, but now I'm limiting that only to non-DOS purposes, as it turned out that Plop would permanently take up about 40K of upper memory (so DOS can no longer use it) if used this way.

On relatively modern systems, GRUB4DOS can be very flexible.

Sowden wrote on 2023-12-31, 21:47:

Yes, I think the ESSCFG drivers works just fine with my Compaq laptop. I gave UNISOUND a try, but it came up with an error saying "No PnP card detected." Not really sure why its not working well for me, so I will go with the other ones instead.

Maybe you need /FORCEPNP. But if ESSCFG is already working for you then you can keep using it with your existing configuration.

The best way to have your own slim DOS Boot Disk, is to format a floppy disk with the current DOS version.

I'm not a fan of DOS that comes with Windows 95 and above, and my absolute favourite is MS-DOS 6.22. However, the following applies for all DOS versions. Including FreeDOS.

1FORMAT A: (or B:) /s

/s switch is to transfer the system files to make it bootable. In this case, they will be the hidden MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS files. And it will also place a copy of the COMMAND.COM file in the floppy.

This is the absolute "bare minimum" disk you need to boot into DOS.

Next, transfer all the required device drivers and loaders that YOU want to load. And create their entries in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

At the very least, you need to copy :

1. HIMEM.SYS (and EMM386.EXE if you require Expanded Memory for the Games or Applications)
2. CTMOUSE.EXE (takes up only 3K in RAM)
3. QCDROM.SYS (also takes up about only 3K of RAM)
4. SHSUCDX.COM (takes up about 6K of RAM instead of MSCDEX which goes up to 27K)

HIMEM.SYS comes with your DOS, the rest are available for free online.

I have read threads about incompabilities using the QCDROM or SHSUCDX, but I have yet to come across any.

My boot disk also contains PCTOOLS.EXE which is from version 4.3 Deluxe. It can do lots of things using only a single executable - like editing and viewing files, sorting files, directory and file maintenance, etc. Only thing is that, it takes up about 170K of disk space. But for its functionalities, that is okay. (Also take note that it's an old version and may have problem reading larger drives - more than 512MB maybe)

And also, I place FORMAT.COM, FDISK.EXE, XCOPY.EXE, DELTREE.EXE (from DOS 6 and above) and SYS.COM into the boot floppy disk.

Finally, I stay away from dealing with USB when it comes to dealing with pure DOS, unless there is no other choice, like if only USB CD-ROM drive is available. Or need to use a USB mouse. Which I will avoid.

I think how to add entries into CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT is beyond the scope of this thread.

The above post helped me out a lot actually, and helped me realize what I was doing wrong. Let me explain.

Malik wrote on 2024-01-02, 03:07:

The best way to have your own slim DOS Boot Disk, is to format a floppy disk with the current DOS version. […]
Show full quote

The best way to have your own slim DOS Boot Disk, is to format a floppy disk with the current DOS version.

I'm not a fan of DOS that comes with Windows 95 and above, and my absolute favourite is MS-DOS 6.22. However, the following applies for all DOS versions. Including FreeDOS.

Copy code to clipboard

1FORMAT A: (or B:) /s

This did give me a bare bones floppy that was bootable. The problem that I have had with floppies found on bootdisk.com, were that anything below Windows 95 would not find the C:/ drive on boot. But using the code above with FORMAT gave me a boot disk that found C:/ and gave me the ground work to build upon.

Then this also helped me out alot.

Malik wrote on 2024-01-02, 03:07:

At the very least, you need to copy : […]
Show full quote

At the very least, you need to copy :

1. HIMEM.SYS (and EMM386.EXE if you require Expanded Memory for the Games or Applications)
2. CTMOUSE.EXE (takes up only 3K in RAM)
3. QCDROM.SYS (also takes up about only 3K of RAM)
4. SHSUCDX.COM (takes up about 6K of RAM instead of MSCDEX which goes up to 27K)

In tutorials that I was using online, they were pairing SHSUCDX.COM, found here, with CDROM.SYS. Once I paired it with QCDROM.SYS that I found here, it gave me the CONGIG.SYS info to make it work. Also understanding that SHSUCDX.COM was replacing MSCDEX was a big help too. With those CDROM drivers, adding EMM386.EXE, the mouse driver, and the USB drivers I learned from this video here, I now have a great DOS floppy boot disk.

LSS10999 wrote on 2024-01-01, 02:53:

Maybe you need /FORCEPNP. But if ESSCFG is already working for you then you can keep using it with your existing configuration.

I tried UNISOUND with that command line, and it still did nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Bothers me a bit that a program should work for me, though it doesn't no matter what I do. But oh well, I did find sound drivers at archive.org that did work for me, so its all good.

Malik wrote on 2024-01-02, 03:07:

My boot disk also contains PCTOOLS.EXE which is from version 4.3 Deluxe. It can do lots of things using only a single executable - like editing and viewing files, sorting files, directory and file maintenance, etc. Only thing is that, it takes up about 170K of disk space. But for its functionalities, that is okay. (Also take note that it's an old version and may have problem reading larger drives - more than 512MB maybe)

I gave PCTOOLS.EXE a look, but I am using a IDE CF to SD Card Adapter, and I have a 64 GB card in there. So it didn't really see my drive. After I put in what you suggested as bare bones, I just added FORMAT.COM, FDISK.EXE, and I added XFDISK.EXE because its a great formatting program.

Thanks for your help everyone.