I'm not sure to understand you problem properly, but if I understood properly, you want to make a bootable DOS USB hdd, right ? then I'm pretty sure that if you have command.com, msdos.sys, io.sys and sys.com on DOSBox, you could do this. Or maybe you could do this with a virtual machine ?

You could use VMware, assuming you can get the USB device working with the virtual machine – which would require either running Windows 98 in VMware or finding DOS USB drivers. Then you could render the disk bootable using the "sys" command and copy over whatever else you need.

Otherwise, you'll need to make a hard disk image in VMware (DOSBox would work for that too) and then find some program capable of writing the disk image to your hard drive. Winimage ought to do it.

Deksor wrote:

then I'm pretty sure that if you have command.com, msdos.sys, io.sys and sys.com on DOSBox, you could do this.

I'm pretty sure you could never use sys.com in DOSBox to write directly to a real hard disk.

Basically I have my dos 6.22 floppy image files on my win 7 machine. I can hook up my hard drive that I am using for my dos 6.22 build to the win7 machine with a ide to USB adapter. I want to basically install dos 6.22 onto this drive using the dos image files on my win7 machine if that possible.

If you create a Primary Fat Partition and connect it to a Win98 machine, then you could "sys c: g:" (for Example, g is the Drive Letter of the empty HDD.)

Sammy wrote:

If you create a Primary Fat Partition and connect it to a Win98 machine, then you could "sys c: g:" (for Example, g is the Drive Letter of the empty HDD.)

But that would copy the Win98 system files, not MS-DOS 6.22, wouldn't it?

I don't think it is possible to make the HDD boot DOS 6.22 without booting DOS 6.22 (either from floppy or from HDD) on the system that is connected to the HDD.

Yeah I'm thinking it's not possible unless someone knows a trick I haven't figured out yet. Using Win98 would be DOS 7.

Vmware Workstation has the ability to use a physical disk. Not sure if Vmware Player has this option or not.

I've only ever used this for a data drive in Vmware never for an OS though.

fsmith2003 wrote:

Yeah I'm thinking it's not possible unless someone knows a trick I haven't figured out yet. Using Win98 would be DOS 7.

Technically, you can manually move MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, and COMMAND.COM and dump the right MBR to the top of the disk. You can also use real drives with Virtualbox and boot using a DOS 6.22 floppy image.
http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tutorials/u … tualbox-vm.html

I do know that once you install DOS onto a hard drive in a real PC, you can move that hard drive to any computer and it will boot normally and run fine. I have a DOS hdd that I have games and benchmarks installed on that I move from machine to machine when running benchmarks.

fsmith2003 wrote:

Yeah I'm thinking it's not possible unless someone knows a trick I haven't figured out yet.

Yes, I already explained the trick, sir. 😒

Otherwise, you'll need to make a hard disk image in VMware (DOSBox would work for that too) and then find some program capable of writing the disk image to your hard drive. Winimage ought to do it.

gdjacobs wrote:

Technically, you can manually move MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, and COMMAND.COM and dump the right MBR to the top of the disk.

There are specific requirements for the particular sectors in which MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS need to be located. Simply copying the files without using the "sys" command will not work, even if you can take care of the boot sector some other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IO.SYS

IIRC, IO.SYS must be copied first, then MSDOS.SYS, and finally COMMAND.COM. I did this a year ago, so there might be some further wrinkles and subtleties which don't come to mind immediately.

Can't the DOS 7.x boot loader be used ? As far as I remember, it had the ability do actually
read the FAT and to load DOS system files from subdirectories.

If this proves to be true, someone could us it to boot DOS 6.2 also.

Jorpho wrote:

Otherwise, you'll need to make a hard disk image in VMware (DOSBox would work for that too)
and then find some program capable of writing the disk image to your hard drive. Winimage ought to do it.

Cool trick! 😎 (I believe I once did something similar with Qemu and Win32DiskImager.)

K1n9_Duk3 wrote:

Sammy wrote:

If you create a Primary Fat Partition and connect it to a Win98 machine, then you could "sys c: g:" (for Example, g is the Drive Letter of the empty HDD.)

But that would copy the Win98 system files, not MS-DOS 6.22, wouldn't it?

I don't think it is possible to make the HDD boot DOS 6.22 without booting DOS 6.22 (either from floppy or from HDD) on the system that is connected to the HDD.

You are right then you have dos 7, i don't read the 6.22 in the title cause i always use dos 7.
(I only have 1 machine with dos 6.22 and even there i use files from dos 7 on it, e.g. himem.sys, cause. himem.sys from dos 6.22 does only find 23 MB of my 48 MB Ram installed)

But maybe you can use some programm like virtual floppy. Mount the image there and sys A: G: (G: is replaced with real Drive Letter of new empty HDD for Dos)

Or, and that is much more complicated... install a Dos of Win95 and use a guide to add the Dos6.22 to the Win95 boot menu. (boot previous Dos-version)

Jo22 wrote:

Can't the DOS 7.x boot loader be used ? As far as I remember, it had the ability do actually
read the FAT and to load DOS system files from subdirectories.

There's really very little you can do with MS-DOS 6.22 that you can't do just as well with DOS 7.x, unless you really want the full MS-DOS 6.22 installation. (But then, there's not necessarily all that much in an MS-DOS 6.22 installation that's necessarily useful.)

IIRC, IO.SYS must be copied first, then MSDOS.SYS, and finally COMMAND.COM. I did this a year ago, so there might be some further wrinkles and subtleties which don't come to mind immediately.

I wouldn't have thought of trying it that way – especially since you'd still need to do something about the boot sector – but I suppose that could work if you start with a completely empty drive.

Jo22 wrote:

Can't the DOS 7.x boot loader be used ? As far as I remember, it had the ability do actually read the FAT and to load DOS system […]
Show full quote

Can't the DOS 7.x boot loader be used ? As far as I remember, it had the ability do actually
read the FAT and to load DOS system files from subdirectories.

If this proves to be true, someone could us it to boot DOS 6.2 also.

Jorpho wrote:

Otherwise, you'll need to make a hard disk image in VMware (DOSBox would work for that too)
and then find some program capable of writing the disk image to your hard drive. Winimage ought to do it.

Cool trick! 😎 (I believe I once did something similar with Qemu and Win32DiskImager.)

Again, as noted earlier, Virtualbox can map and use the raw physical drive. I'm not sure if VMware can as well, but it's probably worth checking. This way, you can avoid reimaging the drive over and over.

What about making a bootable 6.2 CD?
You don't even need to boot from it, sys D:\ C:\ for example

Got dos on my old eeepc by installing it in qemu on my linux desktop into a raw disk image, then writing the image onto the eeepc's hard drive with dd. As for windows, I know you can convert virtualbox images into raw ones, so probably there's a similar way to go about it there.

Tried something similar, while trying to get Win95 and Dos working on one machine. Ended up just using bootable floppydrives for the MBR 🙁
You can run the sys command using files from a specific location (like your harddrive). Chinny22 wrote the syntax down. But if I recall correctly, it was still necessary to run from a bootable medium(which is of course not the same harddrive you want to copy to) just because of the MBR.
Everything else you can copy to the specific location with the right attributes.
a bootable cd-rom could be a solution, depending on the system (if it is supporting other devices, than A/C for example).

If you have a CD drive, making a bootable CD from the boot floppy is all you need as long as the boot floppy has enough tools.

I recall I made a bootable MSDOS floppy image with all necessary tools to partition a hard drive, format it, and transfer system files (fdisk, format, sys), and some way to copy rest of the files that go into DOS directory. Depending on what you need, it could be laplink or interlink to transfer files over serial or parallel connection, or terminal software to transfer files with modem protocols like zmodem, or just CD-ROM drivers to unzip from the actual CD-rom volume. Then that floppy image can be used as a bootable floppy or bootable CD-ROM image.

With USB sticks, it's more random if old PCs boot from it, and whether it is seen as removable floppy or fixed disk.