Shponglefan wrote on 2022-04-05, 12:54:I'm wondering if it's possible to build and use a DOS based system without any reliance on CDs and/or floppy disks.
Once the system is installed then you don't need the floppy, but suspect it would be much easier to initially setup the system from a floppy.
As I recall I booted from a floppy, created a 2GB FAT16 C: partition, copied DOS onto the C:, removed the floppy drive and then booted DOS from C:
Having done this I installed the SD card into this W10 system, copied the W98SE CD to C:\98SE\, moved the SD card back to the target system and installed W98SE from DOS.
Once W98SE was running I used that to partition the rest of the SD card, put the 2003 CDs into D: and then ran the 2003 setup program from W98SE.
When a SD card if connected via USB this limits the partitioning options as it will be a removable drive, once partitioned and formatted all is OK, but partition and format the partitions on the target system
The main thing to avoid is partitioning/formatting the SD Card using anything later than Windows XP/2003 and to format C: using DOS.
Note on the target system RAA-C is C:, etc..