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Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive?

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<ken.ledger48@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:b6cbd074-71df-4df0-8f2a-ff97b0e49e59@googlegroups.com...
On Tuesday, 1 February 2011 16:32:07 UTC, Kulin Remailer  wrote:
>> Is there any way to install DOS on a modern PC or laptop with no floppy
>> drive? I can burn CDs if necessary but I can't figure out if it's 
>> possible
>> to get 5 installation disks on one CD to be recognized during an install 
>> or
>> if a CD install for DOS is even possible. Any suggestions?
>>
>> If the PC supports PXE boot does anybody know if you can install DOS over
>> PXE or how hard it is to setup a PXE server? What are my options for 
>> doing
>> this I guess is my question.
>
>
>Here is my experiance on this as i am trying to do it myself.
>
>There is a file on the first diskette called "setup.ini", i have
>edited this to take out the references to the diskettes as this
>is where it tells you to insert disk 2 ect.
>
>Crating the bootable cd on nero is easy you just need to get the
>dos boot disc image (bootdisc.com). this puts about 18 files on
>the cd, inset it into the pc you want to install dos onto boot up
>and type sys c:\ that will transfer the boot files to the hard drive
>and will boot up from the hard drive then.
>
>That bit is easy........the hard bit it getting the rest of the
>install files on to the hard drive. I have tried copying all the
>dos files to the cd first telling nero not to close the disk, i
>then made the cd bootable as described above. Trouble is when you
>boot from the cd not all the files are shown on the pc you installing
>dos onto. You really need a cd driver installed to allow access to the
>cd after booting, it's a catch 22 situation you can get the cd driver
>onto the pc as you need dos there to accept it.
>
>I will try what somebody suggested earlier in this post and make a
>directory this may be visable after booting

Hi guys,

I usually visit this group but I don't think I have posted anything
in some time.

Anyway, the thought that came to my mind would be to use an emulator
such as Bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net/).

You say you can burn CD's, so this tells me you have another PC
with some sort of OS installed.

Since DOS can only see so many megs of disk space and a normal CD
will only hold around 700meg, I would create a virtual disk of
about 700meg on my working PC.  Install Bochs, and use its floppy
emulation to install DOS onto the virtual disk using all of the
floppies, one at a time.

Once you have DOS installed as you wish, then burn that image to
the CD, along with a utility that will write the image from the
CD to the physical sectors of the hard drive.

Once you have done this, you are done.

This does require that you have Bochs (or another emulator) installed,
a file image of each floppy, (disk0.img, disk1.img, disk2.img, ...),
a 700meg virtual disk image (hdd.img), a bootable CDROM with FreeDOS
or other OS, and a utility to read the 700Meg image from the CD and
write it to the hard drive, a sector at a time.  (Bochs will read
directly from your floppy drive as the emulated floppy drive, so no
need for images, as long as you have a Win9x/NT family of Windows
installed.)

Speaking of FreeDOS, if you are not set on one brand of DOS,
FreeDOS has a bootable CD image that will install itself directly
to the hard drive.  FreeDOS is very similar to (MS)DOS with little
or no difference noticed by the applications executed upon it.

http://www.freedos.org/

Anyway, just my two bits, cents, whatever.  Hope this helps.

Ben

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Thread

How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? Kulin Remailer <remailer@reece.net.au> - 2011-02-01 16:32 +0000
  Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? ken.ledger48@gmail.com - 2014-10-21 07:57 -0700
    Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? "Benjamin David Lunt" <zfysz@fysnet.net> - 2014-10-21 10:35 -0700
    Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? Wildman <best_lay@yahoo.com> - 2014-10-21 14:20 -0500
    Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? "R.Wieser" <address@not.available> - 2014-10-21 21:56 +0200
      Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? Wildman <best_lay@yahoo.com> - 2014-10-21 21:24 -0500
        Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? adsources369@gmail.com - 2017-09-09 05:23 -0700
          Re: How can I install DOS without a floppy drive? Trifle Menot <triflemenot@protocol.invalid> - 2017-09-09 13:52 +0000

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