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Help me finish my first DOS build

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Reply 20 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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progress report: so now that the ps2 mouse works, and sb pro 2 works at least under dos, but cant get it to work on win98... main reason for win98 was to get usb flash storage to work so I can easily copy files, but sb pro 2 not working was a major problem, so as a test I tried to install win95 osr 2.5, and found a custom usb driver XUSBSUPP with which I am now able to use my usb flash stick in win95 to copy files easily, and tried to do the same thing with the sb pro 2, add it from "add/remove hardware" in control panel, and unlike win98, it didnt bsod, it installed the driver fine, tested it with nfs se, the game works beatifully.

So, things worked out nicely, now I should be able to use the machine nicely with dos 6.22, win 3.11 and win95 osr2.5. Final thing left to figure out - how to best set up a dualboot of dos 6.22 and win95 on same hdd. I tried the usual install dos in c: first, then install win95 in d:, but that seems like it messed things up. Win95 seemed to work fine, but the only way to boot to dos 6.22 seemed to be to press F8 during win95 boot, and select "boot previous version of dos", which worked the first time I tried it, but after rebooting the machine again, it would no longer boot anything at all, looks like the boot loader crapped itself. So guess that's not the best way to do it... sigh... things with PCs this old sure are complicated

p.s. dualbooting 6.22 and win95 osr2.x sure is complicated
http://www.mdgx.com/osr2.htm#2BOOT

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Reply 21 of 46, by Intel486dx33

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I would FDISK the entire thing and just go with DOS 6.22 and Maybe Win3.11

1) FDISK and Partition the entire thing.
2) Download the DOS 6.22 image files and extract to a floppy.
https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/dos.html
3) download and extract and save to a hard disk ( Drivers ( cdrom, audio, network, video )).
4) Download and extract and burn to a CDROM DOS 6.22 and Win.3.11
REMOVED

5) Download on you WinPC and extract in a folder on your harddrive.
Then burn all these files to a CDROM.

6) on your Retro PC insert the DOS 6.22 floppy boot floppy and then copy to C drive
# A:\xcopy /e/s *.* C:
# SYS C:
remove floppy and reboot.

You now have a working DOS computer with working CDROM

7) insert the CDROM disk you created with all your files and just copy the files to the Hard drive.
in a folder called SDepot

8) from SDepot ( Software depot folder ) run the install programs.
run setup for DOS 6.22 and Win.3.11

9) Install your hardware drivers.

10) edit your config files and you are done.

Last edited by DosFreak on 2024-09-25, 23:06. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 22 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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can't really "fdisk the entire thing" for dos 6, 10gb xbox hdd is too big, dos 6 only supports fat16, max partition size 2gb, may as well use the remaining 8gb for win95, not to mention theres some win95-era games that I'd also like to play on this machine as they dont quite work flawlessly on my newer win98se builds, such as nfs 1 se win95 executable. Also I don't currently have a cd drive mounted on this machine, so it's floppy drive only. Will probably add a cd drive later when I find something period-correct as all my optical drives are like a decade newer than this machine, and currently in use in win98se and winXP builds. No network card either, so I really need usb to copy files from a flash stick, so win9x has more than one use. Anyways, thanks for your advices, but I figured out how to install dos 6.22 already, with 3 floppies (and wfw 3.11 with 6 floppies), had it running like a week ago, even played a little bit of Doom on it, even if keyboard-only as I didnt have working mouse. Any reason to go that extra trouble to get the floppy images onto a CD? Seems to be much more convenient to just install straight from floppy

10) edit your config files and you are done.

what config files? what should I edit?

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Reply 23 of 46, by dionb

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-11, 09:58:

[...]

I have a couple of Yamaha isa cards with ymf719 chip, I tested one of them a while ago, idk about dos but win98 seemed to have built-in drivers for it so it worked out of the box without me needing to install or configure anything at all... I might put it back in, if this sb pro 2 cant be made to work properly under windows, but really without solving the mouse issue I cant do much with this machine

SBPro2 can work fine under Windows, but as it is way below WSS spec, a lot will sound crap on it.

To get it working, you need to know it's a non-PnP card, so:
- Add New Hardware in Win98
- When it doesn't find the card, let Windows search for non-PnP hardware
- If it finds it, great. If not, tell Windows what it is. Win98SE contains built-in SBPro2 drivers, just choose Sound, Video & Game controllers, then Creative, the Soundblaster Pro 2.
- You'll need to tell Windows the correct resources for the card. That's whatever you set on the SBPro2 that already works in DOS. Default would be A220 I5 D1.

As for which card is better: both!

You can run both cards next to each other in Windows and DOS and use whatever works best. In Windows the YMF719 far outclasses the SBPro2 as it fully supports WSS, with 16b sound at 44 and 48kHz stereo. SBPro2 does 8b sound at 22kHz max stereo (or 44kHz mono). In DOS, the Yamaha will generally also sound better as it can upsample 22kHz samples to 44kHz, although the quality of the card itself will determine how much better this sounds.

The way to run both is to choose different resources for each. For compatibility, the CT1600 is better, so keep that on A220 I5 D1. Set the YMF719 to A240 I3 or 7 and D0 or 3. Set the SET BLASTER variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT to the CT1600 settings, so SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4. In DOS games, if WSS is supported, use that for 16b sound on the YMF. If not, try the YMF first for better sound. If it works: fine, if not use the CT1600 settings. Games that don't let you choose (generally the older stuff) will follow the BLASTER variable and run on the CT1600.

Reply 24 of 46, by Intel486dx33

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The pentium 150 is around 1995 and the pentium 233 is from around 1997
So I would not worry about period correctness.
What should be most important is good game play back and performance.
Finding a good CDROM from 1995 is a gamble.
Better to use a more modern CDROM drive like a 52x Sony IDE drive.
That’s from my experience.
I will choose performance and reliability of period correctness.

What good is a period correct computer if it will not play the games in good quality and performance.

Good game playback should be your priority.

Reply 25 of 46, by jakethompson1

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-11, 14:45:

So, things worked out nicely, now I should be able to use the machine nicely with dos 6.22, win 3.11 and win95 osr2.5. Final thing left to figure out - how to best set up a dualboot of dos 6.22 and win95 on same hdd. I tried the usual install dos in c: first, then install win95 in d:, but that seems like it messed things up. Win95 seemed to work fine, but the only way to boot to dos 6.22 seemed to be to press F8 during win95 boot, and select "boot previous version of dos", which worked the first time I tried it, but after rebooting the machine again, it would no longer boot anything at all, looks like the boot loader crapped itself. So guess that's not the best way to do it... sigh... things with PCs this old sure are complicated

The previous version of DOS should work. I've used it before. It keeps your old config files under AUTOEXEC.DOS and CONFIG.DOS and renames them back and forth. I assume it keeps a backup boot sector too.
Is there any way you ran fdisk or any other disk utilities while you were booted into DOS? Maybe that messed it up.

Part of the issue you are running into is that both DOS and Win9x were both designed to run from the first primary partition, not a second primary or an extended partition. So the only way you are going to get DOS and Win9x on separate partitions to work is with some third party boot manager.

How come you don't just use booting Win9x in command prompt only mode as your DOS equivalent? That's what basically everyone using "DOS 7.1" is doing.

Reply 26 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:11:

The previous version of DOS should work. I've used it before. It keeps your old config files under AUTOEXEC.DOS and CONFIG.DOS and renames them back and forth. I assume it keeps a backup boot sector too.
Is there any way you ran fdisk or any other disk utilities while you were booted into DOS? Maybe that messed it up.

Part of the issue you are running into is that both DOS and Win9x were both designed to run from the first primary partition, not a second primary or an extended partition. So the only way you are going to get DOS and Win9x on separate partitions to work is with some third party boot manager.

As it turns out, "previous version of dos" would work for vanilla win95, but in osr2.x the new io.sys supporting fat32 overwrites dos6's old one when you use that feature, so you can only go to "previous version of dos" once and it borks, looks like theres a way to patch osr2.x not to do that, but it looks complicated, so yes, I will try to use a 3rd party boot manager, just don't know which one yet. And since I'll be going that route, I'll see if I can also add os2 warp 4 to the boot menu, because why not 😀

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:11:

How come you don't just use booting Win9x in command prompt only mode as your DOS equivalent? That's what basically everyone using "DOS 7.1" is doing.

Ideally I should, I'm just not convinced dos 7 has the exact same game compatibility as dos 6, and that win9x has the same game compatibility as win3.1 (I've downloaded a large pack of win3.1 games I wanna try out). So this is actually one of the things I will do with this machine if I can set it up the way I want it. I will play each DOS game twice, first time on dos 6, 2nd time on dos7 and check if it works the same on 7 as it did on 6, and same thing with the win3.1 game pack, first play them on win3.11, then try them on win9x and see if anything breaks 😀

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Reply 27 of 46, by amadeus777999

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I dig the monitor!
If you're a "man of Doom" you could maybe buy a K5 and run the system on and off with it. For the sound I would go with an AWE than supports a ram upgrade... but that strongly depends on how you like your music to sound.

Reply 28 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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I indeed would love to have awe32 ct3900 in this machine, but they always sell for so expensive. If I see one cheap I'm grabbing it. This sb pro 2 and the two yamahas I got for like 5 eur each. But if I could, ideally this machine would have a gigabyte 586dx 430hx dual socket 7 mobo with dual pentium 200, s3 virge/gx 4mb as main, and voodoo1, powervr pcx1 and rendition v1000 accelerators chained to it, and for sound an awe32 ct3900 with GUS ACE and a roland mpu401 card in the 3rd isa slot 😉 But as it is, I'm using whatever I can find for cheap, I'm not willing to pay the big bucks. All the parts currently in the machine were found for cheap

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Reply 29 of 46, by Joseph_Joestar

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-12, 08:40:

But if I could, ideally this machine would have a gigabyte 586dx 430hx dual socket 7 mobo with dual pentium 200

Dual CPUs are useless for DOS, and also Win9x for that matter. At the very least, you need Windows NT or newer to make use of them.

If you want affordable but decent General MIDI on that machine, get a Dreamblaster and hook it up to the wavetable header of your Yamaha card.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 30 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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yeah, I know, but if I have that, I could mark this machine as "ultimate 1996 pc" and add it to my sig, and of course if I can get this mobo I will add NT4 to the multiboot to justify it. But doesn't seem like I'll ever get it, one sold recently for 200 euros, and theres an auction for another one on ebay right now, current bid 160 euros... people are crazy, paying triple digits for obsolete components

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Reply 31 of 46, by dr_st

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I haven't read the entire thread, so forgive me if I'm repeating things. I'll just try to summarize the key points that I learned over the years.

Dual booting DOS6 and Win9x is generally pointless. The only meaningful exception is when you want to run both Windows 9x and Windows 3.11, in which case it may be more convenient to have each on a separate partition, with a separate DOS core for each.

As far as pure DOS goes - DOS 6 and DOS 7 have the exact same game compatibility. Every once in a while someone claims otherwise, but they either don't give specific examples, or their examples turn out to be wrong.

Win3.x games and Win9x games - may be a different story - I don't know.

If you want the dual boot on the same hard drive without third-party boot managers, the best way to do this is to define a FAT16 primary partition, and use that as the boot partition (C:). First install DOS6.x/Win3.x there. Create an extended partition and logical volume(s) within it. These can be FAT16 or FAT32 (or any mix). Install Win9x onto any logical volume in the extended partition (D:, E: or whatever). The boot sector and boot files will still go on C:, and Win9x will manage the "previous MS-DOS version" for you. Since the Windows directories of Win3.x and Win9x are on separate partitions, there will be no confusion.

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Reply 32 of 46, by Joseph_Joestar

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-12, 08:56:

yeah, I know, but if I have that, I could mark this machine as "ultimate 1996 pc" and add it to my sig, and of course if I can get this mobo I will add NT4 to the multiboot to justify it.

I guess that makes sense if you're aiming for the highest tier hardware that was available that year. But you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who was gaming on such a system in '96. At that time, dual CPUs were used in servers and high-end workstations, not by people who wanted to play games.

I'd go for something more practical if you're aiming for the "gamer's dream rig of '96" type of build. You would probably get better gaming performance out of a higher class, single-CPU board anyhow.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 33 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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dr_st wrote on 2020-09-12, 08:58:

If you want the dual boot on the same hard drive without third-party boot managers, the best way to do this is to define a FAT16 primary partition, and use that as the boot partition (C:). First install DOS6.x/Win3.x there. Create an extended partition and logical volume(s) within it. These can be FAT16 or FAT32 (or any mix). Install Win9x onto any logical volume in the extended partition (D:, E: or whatever). The boot sector and boot files will still go on C:, and Win9x will manage the "previous MS-DOS version" for you. Since the Windows directories of Win3.x and Win9x are on separate partitions, there will be no confusion.

I tried that already and it didn't work, seems like it only works with vanilla win95 prior to osr2.x, so I will try with a 3rd party boot manager of some sort, probably tomorrow if I have the time

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-09-12, 09:54:

I guess that makes sense if you're aiming for the highest tier hardware that was available that year. But you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who was gaming on such a system in '96. At that time, dual CPUs were used in servers and high-end workstations, not by people who wanted to play games.

I'd go for something more practical if you're aiming for the "gamer's dream rig of '96" type of build. You would probably get better gaming performance out of a higher class, single-CPU board anyhow.

Yeah, I know basically no retro games support smp, other than maybe q3 and ut99, and that smp can actually cause issues with some games, but I like dual cpu systems, they're cool, sadly so far I only have one tyan dual slot 1 mobo and that's it, I want more but its hard to find any for reasonable prices

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Reply 34 of 46, by dr_st

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-13, 16:54:

I tried that already and it didn't work, seems like it only works with vanilla win95 prior to osr2.x

I find this, as well as the source you linked to above highly questionable considering that there are evidence of folks using this method to dualboot DOS6 and Win98.

I'm almost sure I was one of them, but since it was so long ago, I can't be sure exactly which Win9x version(s) I used before I realized the dual boot gives me nothing of value, and gave up on it.

In fact the MDGX page is confusing. It is unclear whether it claims this simply doesn't work without their patch, or doesn't work if Win9x is installed first (I have always known that DOS should be installed first for it to work).

But that may all be besides the point, since other solutions also exist, and may work better for you.

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Reply 35 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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well, it didn't work for me, it happened pretty much as they described, it seemed to work at first, but I was only able to "boot earlier version of DOS" once, after that the boot loader seemed to have crapped itself because the PC would no longer boot into any OS and would just stay on the post screen

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Reply 36 of 46, by dr_st

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And you really installed DOS 6 first, then Win98? Because their "workaround" for Win98 SE is literally just that:

1. Install MS-DOS 6.xx (6.00 up to 6.22) 2. Install Windows 95B/95C OSR 2.x or Windows 98/98 SE, and make sure to answer YES whe […]
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1. Install MS-DOS 6.xx (6.00 up to 6.22)
2. Install Windows 95B/95C OSR 2.x or Windows 98/98 SE, and make sure to answer YES when prompted to BACKUP your old Operating System files
(steps 3-5 irrelevant for Win98 SE by their own admission)
6. Finally, reboot one last time

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Reply 37 of 46, by appiah4

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You have a 430TX motherboard that means its IDE controller has ATAPI support and it has USB support if you have the breakout cable (easy to obtain). So Just install a CD-ROM, use the USB breakout, then boot Puppy Linux Retro 4.1.2 from CD. Then you have an OS with USB Mass Storage support. Copy all relevant installation files to a USB, plug USB into your retro PC and copy them over. Done.

Reply 38 of 46, by God Of Gaming

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dr_st wrote on 2020-09-14, 04:28:

And you really installed DOS 6 first, then Win98?

yes, and it was win95 osr 2.5, but with osr 2.x seems like you can only reboot back to dos6 once before io.sys gets overriden

appiah4 wrote on 2020-09-14, 06:53:

You have a 430TX motherboard that means its IDE controller has ATAPI support and it has USB support if you have the breakout cable (easy to obtain). So Just install a CD-ROM, use the USB breakout, then boot Puppy Linux Retro 4.1.2 from CD. Then you have an OS with USB Mass Storage support. Copy all relevant installation files to a USB, plug USB into your retro PC and copy them over. Done.

I dont have usb bracket for the onboard usb, but had some pci usb 2.0 controller with via chipset, got that one to work with xusbsupp.exe.

Anyways, after lots of struggling today, finally got it all set up to work, pretty much. I ended up using System Commander 2000 (5.x) from winworld, thanks to that I have one primary partition with dos 6.22 + wfw 3.11, and another primary partition with win95 osr 2.0, and a boot loader that lets me select which to boot and sets it as active. Things work alright in all OSes now. I also tried to add a 3rd partition with os2 warp 4, but it complained that it cant find any partitions larget than 175mb to install to, even tho I made a 2gb partition for it, weird... will deal with that some other day I guess.

Now then, I tried to add the yamaha ymf719 card as suggested earlier, to use it under win95, and use the sb pro 2 for dos and win3.11. Guess I was too optimistic to expect win95 osr 2.0 to contain a driver for the yamaha just because win98se does. It's not detecting it. It only detected the sb pro 2. The yamaha is not even showing up in device manager and "add hardware" doesnt help either, only adds the sb pro 2. I'll try to find a driver for it I guess, tho if its not showing up in device manager the driver might not help. Probably gonna have to remove the yamaha and stay with just the sb pro, which at least works now, under all OSes installed

p.s. downloaded yamaha driver from the vogons driver database, installed it but card still doesnt show up, sigh... guess I'm gonna need to pull it out and stay with just the pro 2

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Reply 39 of 46, by dr_st

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God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-16, 21:38:

yes, and it was win95 osr 2.5, but with osr 2.x seems like you can only reboot back to dos6 once before io.sys gets overriden

Well, this is consistent with what I read on mdgx - it seems like Win95 OSR 2.x has a bug that is not present is the original Win95 or Win98. I must have skipped OSR 2.x, so I never encountered it.

God Of Gaming wrote on 2020-09-16, 21:38:

Now then, I tried to add the yamaha ymf719 card as suggested earlier, to use it under win95, and use the sb pro 2 for dos and win3.11. Guess I was too optimistic to expect win95 osr 2.0 to contain a driver for the yamaha just because win98se does. It's not detecting it. It only detected the sb pro 2. The yamaha is not even showing up in device manager and "add hardware" doesnt help either, only adds the sb pro 2. I'll try to find a driver for it I guess, tho if its not showing up in device manager the driver might not help. Probably gonna have to remove the yamaha and stay with just the sb pro, which at least works now, under all OSes installed

From what I recall, even on Windows 98 SE, I originally had some resource allocation issues and had to disable some legacy IRQs in the BIOS to get he Yamaha Audician32 to work properly. Are you trying to use both cards at the same time? If so, then I would expect various conflicts and issues. In any case, quality aside, the Audician32 (if that is what you have) is SBPro-compatible, so it doesn't give you much over the existing SBPro2 (unless you have some games that explicitly use the WSS).

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