Did you try any of the suggestions provided in your other thread?

There are certain systems/scenarios, where you cannot get around the fact that DOS simply won't boot if it has not been installed on the machine of question itself.
Sometimes it works (installing DOS on another - time period/system specs-aequivalent - machine), but more often than not, it simply won't work if not inserted into bootstrap on the machine in question itself.

That's why it's always handy/recommended to make a backup image of a working sytem installation on old machines that could loose their only ways and means of system installation (for example proprietary floppy drive). So that whenever the system gets borked, one can re-flash an image of a system that originally was installed on the same machine with for example genuine DOS floppy install and therefore works as it should.

My solution to this dilemma when I got back into retro computers a year and a half ago: use an in-between step: Win98SE

The Win98SE installer boots from CD and can work on some relatively recent systems. But it's also based on DOS, so you can format the CF in a way that will boot on really old hardware. Once I had that, I used it to seed some MS-DOS 6.22 installs on CFs and legacy HDDs.

That said, investing in a Gotek FDD emulator made life MUCH, MUCH easier. You can run the software to manage the images on Windows 10 if you want, then stick the USB stick into the Gotek and hook it up to anything supporting floppy drives. If you include a DOS image with CDRom drivers and FDISK & FORMAT, you have a pretty universal base to get the old metal doing what you want.

lolo799 wrote:

Did you try any of the suggestions provided in your other thread?

Yes, I have tried everything suggested there, unfortunately without success.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

There are certain systems/scenarios, where you cannot get around the fact that DOS simply won't boot if it has not been installed on the machine of question itself.
Sometimes it works (installing DOS on another - time period/system specs-aequivalent - machine), but more often than not, it simply won't work if not inserted into bootstrap on the machine in question itself.

That's why it's always handy/recommended to make a backup image of a working sytem installation on old machines that could loose their only ways and means of system installation (for example proprietary floppy drive). So that whenever the system gets borked, one can re-flash an image of a system that originally was installed on the same machine with for example genuine DOS floppy install and therefore works as it should.

When I got the laptop the OS was win millenium, with half of the OS missing. That's the reason Iam trying to do a clean installation of OS.

dionb wrote:

My solution to this dilemma when I got back into retro computers a year and a half ago: use an in-between step: Win98SE

The Win98SE installer boots from CD and can work on some relatively recent systems. But it's also based on DOS, so you can format the CF in a way that will boot on really old hardware. Once I had that, I used it to seed some MS-DOS 6.22 installs on CFs and legacy HDDs.

That said, investing in a Gotek FDD emulator made life MUCH, MUCH easier. You can run the software to manage the images on Windows 10 if you want, then stick the USB stick into the Gotek and hook it up to anything supporting floppy drives. If you include a DOS image with CDRom drivers and FDISK & FORMAT, you have a pretty universal base to get the old metal doing what you want.

I have tried installing win 98 on another PC which made this pc bootable but really goofy too. Also the CD drive in this laptop is made by TEAC and I can't seem to find any drivers for this hot-swapable drive. Also it doesn't support CD boot whatsoever.

What's currently on your CF card?
What's the laptop you want to use it on? Does its bios detects the card?

If you can format the CF card with FAT16 then you can copy the DOS files over. The only issue is readying the MBR and boot sector. Unfortunately, even in 2019 I'm not aware of a utility that does this (I do it manually with a sector editor).

The alternative is to write a bootable disk image to the CF card. Download one or create it using a VM. Which VM software were you using?

lolo799 wrote:

What's currently on your CF card?
What's the laptop you want to use it on? Does its bios detects the card?

It's formatted to FAT 16 and empty atm.

It's Compaq LTE 5380

bakemono wrote:

If you can format the CF card with FAT16 then you can copy the DOS files over. The only issue is readying the MBR and boot sector. Unfortunately, even in 2019 I'm not aware of a utility that does this (I do it manually with a sector editor).

The alternative is to write a bootable disk image to the CF card. Download one or create it using a VM. Which VM software were you using?

I have used Qemu and Oracle Virtual Box, how to copy those dos files over and how do you edit it ?

Qemu should work, did it boot whichever Dos 6.22 floppy image you have?

lolo799 wrote:

Qemu should work, did it boot whichever Dos 6.22 floppy image you have?

Yup, but it wouldn't recognize the CF. 😒

What does your qemu launching command look like?