Sorry - not familier with that exact board.

I can run DOS on most of my "modern" systems (to be fair I don't have anything super-modern). My question is: How did you get DOS onto your CF?

I find that with things like ACPI, UEFI, massive hard drive support etc. it can be tricky to get a bootable DOS partition working.

The fact that you get to "Loading MS-DOS" means it's running in real mode and started a boot sector/sequence. Most likely it's a problem with the hard drive partition/formatting.

Most of my systems have a floppy (or GeTek) and I can boot DOS, then go through the usual FDISK - FORMAT/S if I want to actually install DOS, some that don't have floppies have BIOS that recognizes a USB floppy drive which also works. Some can boot a USB stick with DOS on it as well.

If you can a floppy (or image) to boot, you at least know DOS can run in the system. Then it becomes a matter of figuring out how to prepare drive and partition to be properly accessable from DOS.

Looking at the info on that board, it doesn't appear to support a floppy directly ... hopefully a USB floppy would be recognized.

Failing that, you could boot W95/98/XT and restart is DOS mode to get "into" DOS.

Btw - I like that that board appears to have 4 COM ports! - I use COMs a lot and getting more than 2 can be quite tricky sometimes.

yes it's a server board, it's got TWO identical Winbond chips!

Unfortunately the IDE detection is pretty crude, I can only enable/disable 32bit mastering and that's it. My CF has my "standard" DOS install which usually works on old boards.
I think you're right, I might want to try my other SD to IDE adaptor and/or just a small SATA drive on which to install DOS.

Also no ISA slots so no XT-IDE.

Let me see what I can do! Thanks for now.

I've had a fair bit of trouble getting large/different/modern hard drive & partitions set up for DOS boots, I really do find it most often best to boot dos from floppy (hopefully your BIOS recognizes USB floppies) and use good old DOS FDISK & FORMAT/S - but you do have to get a drive in a state that FDISK can see a least part of it. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive layout if even weirder on a dedicated server system.

The fact that it get to "Loading MS-DOS"means it is able to read sectors from the drive - but I would expect that's because it's at the start of the drive, and low-level drive organization is different enough that it can't find other sectors. You may need to write the drive using the on-board BIOS.

Like I said befo1re, you could boot a Win?? CD and get to DOS from there. I have tools to move files over a serial connection (even if you don't have it in the remote end), since WinDOS doesn't have much you might have to do that... once you can get stuff onto the system running DOS, there's quite a bit you can do to help get a working install.

If you have a CD burner, I've got DOS boot CDs that I've made over the years that I could make available, I'm sure there are some available at various places on the net as well.

thanks, I'll try a few things. Once the partition is visible and readable, I can copy all the files I need via Windows 11 and CF adaptor. That should work.

USB floppy is detected and it tries to boot but "no operating system found". I tried a couple of discs but nothing.
Windows XP HDDs from other installs immediately reset the board.

I then found a SATA "DOS" HDD. That works! 😁

But apparently I can't have IDE and SATA at the same time so I'll copy what I need on the HDD. Fussy board 😀

In "downloads" on my site, you will find DOSBOOT.ZIP

This has floppy disk images for 16 different editions of DOS (all of which have been released by the makers)

There are also tools (for both DOS and Windows) to write the disk images to actual floppy disks, and a tool to make a .ISO from them so you can make a bootable CD/DVD.

This should let you create a bootable diskette and confirm that the BIOS ability to boot a USB floppy either does or does not work.

I wouldn't give up on an IDE drive just yet. It always seemed to me that IDE was more "fussy" about the drive geometry issues I mentioned earlier (perhaps SATA as more standard, certainly doesn't go as far back) ... If you can get a DOS to boot from floppy disk, see if you can FDISK & FORMAT/S a partition on the IDE drive.

Also worth checking if the USB floppy appears (and works) in DOS booted from the SATA drive - if it does, you could FORMAT/S a floppy there which would give you the same DOS you already have.

thanks for your help, it was just to test some software on it. The board is back to the server where it belongs and all works fine.
I think I wrote those floppies with a windows app - can't remember the name right now. I'm positive that floppy disk works, it was a new one and I have used it multiple times in my projects. I know the USB floppy drive can be hit and miss - despite being a high quality SONY one which can do 720k too.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll link a video here once it's done! And I might get that DOSBOOT.ZIP anyway, might be useful!

@DaveDDS The ZIP file I downloaded refuses to unzip with a "bad message" error?

If you're curious about the "repair", I made my usual video. @DaveDDS mentioned and this thread linked in description 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU0wRmpFofY

tony359 wrote on 2026-04-22, 19:18:

@DaveDDS The ZIP file I downloaded refuses to unzip with a "bad message" error?

Are you by chance using 7zip?

My .ZIPs are created by a purchased/official PKZIP and are "signed" to help authenticate that they are original and actually from me (DDS).

Some newer editions of 7zip fail when trying to unpack signed .ZIPs
The developer is aware of the issue and is working on a fix (this was a while ago, it may already be fixed - check that you have last version)

The 7zip available on my site is the one I use (and older one) and has no problem with the signed files.

Re: DDLINK: Easily move files between/To/From DOS systems

No, I turned to the dark side.

It fails with both macOS native extraction and also with Keka

Wow - this is something I've not seen before!

Turns out the FREEDOS.IMG in that .ZIP has a bad CRC - didn't know how that could have happened, but I remade the archive...
and FREEDOS.IMG in the new .ZIP *Still* had a CRC error.

After a bit of testing, I've determined that there's a bug in PKZIP:

I always use the "-ex" option for "extra compression" - makes the output .ZIP slightly smaller, and my systems are so fast these days that the extra time it takes isn't even noticeable.

But it turns out that in this case. -ex causes the file to encode/decode incorrectly ....

I've remade DOSBOOT.ZIP without -ex and reposted it to my site.

and ... now I have to write a tool to test all the .ZIPs on my sites to confirm that they don't have CRC errors (I don't think it's likely as I've never seen this before, but I need to be certain)

DaveDDS wrote on Yesterday, 21:36:

and ... now I have to write a tool to test all the .ZIPs on my sites to confirm that they don't have CRC errors (I don't think it's likely as I've never seen this before, but I need to be certain)

Yeah, welcome to Tony, I always find those things. 😀 Sorry!

And yes, it works now!

No need to say "Sorry" (are we both Canadians?)

It's good to know that this can occur! - I really hadn't seen it happen before!

Good news is that I created "TZCRC" which walks a whole directory tree examining the .ZIPs and on DDS site linked in my sig, tested over 250 files and didn't find any more with the problem.

Tomorrow I'll test "Daves Old Computers" - that site sees a fair bit of traffic and given that I've not been contacted about any errors, I really doubt it will find any ... but always good to know for sure!