VOGONS


First post, by DaveDDS

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I've just updated the stand-alone bootable ImageDisk

This is a bootable DOS/ImageDisk that can be booted on a system that doesn't
normally have DOS on it. It is a 1.44m 3.5" floppy disk image, which contains:

PC-DOS 7.1 with a config menu offering:
- No additional drivers
- CD/DVD support
- USB mass-storage support
It then enters a menu allowing you to select:
- Standard DOS commands
- Misc. general utiities
- Data transfer utilities
- Network utilities
- ImageDisk
After items have been selected, it creates a RamDisk and unpacks those
things to it. There is also a PKTDRV menu allowing you to select from
*MANY* network packet drivers.

Then you can run ImageDisk to read/write disk images on physical media.

To move images on/off the booted system, you can use:
- DDLINK (Network/Parallel/Serial)
- FTP, TFTP
- Serial TTY/XMODEM
- USB mass storage

This is a bootable diskette image which you can write to a real diskette using
the included XDISK (DOS) or DSKWRITE (Windows)

You can also write it as a bootable floppy image on a CD/DVD - this often makes
that image on the CD/DVD appear as drive A: but this won't affect you ability
to use ImageDisk as it talkes to the FDC hardware directly.

ImageDisk itself was updated to v1.20 a few months back, but I hadn't updated
the bootable edition. In addition I've also updated some of the included tools
to latest versions.

You can get BOOTIMD.ZIP from "Daves Old Computers"
"Download Software/Images" -> "Bootable diskette"

(I wasn't sure if I should post this notice under Hardware or Software... In
my experience more Vogons make use of ImageDisk while testing/debugging floppy
disk setups than to preserve classic software disk images)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 1 of 2, by RetroPCCupboard

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Sounds useful. Many thanks. I haven't really tried networking DOS. Does it require PCDOS 7.1, or does it work in MSDOS 6.22?

Reply 2 of 2, by DaveDDS

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RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-07-29, 06:24:

Sounds useful. Many thanks. I haven't really tried networking DOS. Does it require PCDOS 7.1, or does it work in MSDOS 6.22?

I built the disk with PC-DOS 7.1 (because it was officially free), but it works with pretty much any
DOS version (I still use DOS 5 a lot, and have been recently working with these tools on a DOS 3.3
diskette)

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal