DOS ain't dead

Hi!

These days I'm trying to resurrect an HP OmniBook 800 by installing MS-DOS 6.22. The original 2 GB HDD was too noisy to my ears, so I connected an 8 GB CF card (Transcend 133x) via a CF-to-IDE adapter instead.

Problem: If the CF card is connected, I can't boot from an MS-DOS floppy (tried 6.20 and 6.22) to run setup. After printing "Starting MS-DOS..." the laptop hangs, but the floppy keeps spinning forever.

Partial success #1: If I remove the CF card, I can boot from floppy again.

Partial success #2: When I prepared the CF card on Windows XP using Rufus 2.18 by checking the "FreeDOS" option, I was able to boot the OB800 from floppy and HDD. But that's FAT32 and FreeDOS. -- At least it proves, that there is no general hardware problem.

Partial success #3: Wiping the MBR will let me boot MS-DOS setup from floppy for the first time. After running FDISK to create a new partition, I have to reboot. MS-DOS setup floppy hangs again with "Starting MS-DOS...".

Guess: There might be something wrong about the drive geometry on the CF card, which makes MS-DOS initial drive detection go crazy.

Do you have any idea, how to make the OB800 work with this CF card and MS-DOS 6.22?

Cheers,
Robert

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Forum admin

Yes, CF geometry may cause problems to DOS when there is some mismatch. Try to boot some other disk partitioning tool and creare new partitions on CF. Or wipe the CF MBR completly and let fdisk to make new partitions - if it will boot...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> Yes, CF geometry may cause problems to DOS when there is some mismatch. Try
> to boot some other disk partitioning tool and creare new partitions on CF.
> Or wipe the CF MBR completly and let fdisk to make new partitions - if it
> will boot...

1) I wrote a 10M MS-DOS HDD installation completed in Bochs to the CF card. No boot from CF or MS-DOS floppy possible.
2) So, yes, I wiped the MBR on several ways. Like in 1) or by filling first 512 bytes with 0. (HxD on Windows helped here.)
3) I still found no way to boot MS-DOS, when I create a partition with FDISK. When exiting FDISK, you have to reboot. Afterwards it hangs booting from floppy again.

I also had some mail exchange with Eric Auer, which was at least a little help, but I gave up meanwhile. I will now just use a 2GB CF card from maxflash, which works fine. I already bought six used 1GB cards from the same brand on eBay for cheap.

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Forum admin

The 8GB disk is probably to big for MS-DOS 6.22.
Even if your BIOS supports disks above 7.8GB, the MS-DOS 6.22 does not.
You have to upgrade to MS-DOS 7.1 or to FreeDOS

More info here:
https://www.hardwaresecrets.com/hard-disk-drives-capacity-limits/5/

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DOS-u-akbar!

> The 8GB disk is probably to big for MS-DOS 6.22.

No, not really. 10 years ago I successfully used MS-DOS 6.22 with 40GB Seagate and Fujitsu HDDs clipped down to 32GB by a special jumper. And 32GB is far beyond 8GB, although MS-DOS could only see the first 8GB. But that was enough for me.

> Even if your BIOS supports disks above 7.8GB, the MS-DOS 6.22 does not.

As stated above MS-DOS should just use the first 7.8/8GB and ignore the rest.

> You have to upgrade to MS-DOS 7.1 or to FreeDOS

I forgot to mention, that an MS-DOS 7.1 (Win9x/Me) boot floppy also hangs.
Yes, as I already told, FreeDOS works for me.

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Forum admin

> Do you have any idea, how to make the OB800 work with this CF card and
> MS-DOS 6.22?

I was able to solve it by installing Ontrack Disk Manager 9.57. (EZ-Drive also worked.)

BUT: There seems to be a standby mode issue. Giving the laptop a small break and then executing a simple "dir" at C:\ will result in a 15 second delay. This also happens with the card formatted with FreeDOS FAT32 by Rufus.

I couldn't figure out, how to disable that.

It does not happen with the 2GB maxflash card.

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Forum admin

> BUT: There seems to be a standby mode issue. Giving the laptop a small
> break and then executing a simple "dir" at C:\ will result in a 15 second
> delay. This also happens with the card formatted with FreeDOS FAT32 by
> Rufus.

It seems to be more complicated:
I wiped the CF card and installed EZ-Drive 9.09W yesterday. Then I installed MS-DOS 6.22. All looked fine. No delay or hang, but then it came back. This time more annoying, because it locked up the laptop completely. I had to reboot every time.
So maybe the card (or the CF-to-2.5" IDE adapter) is broken (a little).

> It does not happen with the 2GB maxflash card.

I'll test the maxflash card now for a longer period to check, if this problem also occurs.

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Forum admin

> Yes, CF geometry may cause problems to DOS

To rr: here is root cause of problem: a) fdisk b) your BIOS.

Both of them have own opinion (sometime - different then have modern software) about geometry. Also, BIOS'es had restriction to geometry (does not see full possible 7.5/8GB HDD), some late unrestricted BIOS - have geometry bug. So, it is complicated. Easy way:

Make partitions with MS-Dos FDISK on real dos-hardware, only.

I have bad expirience with 2/4 GB micro sd's: any MBR modifications on modern hardware - broke dos boot (partition resizing etc).

"If you want install ms-dos - just install ms-dos (in dos-way)".

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Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.

> Make partitions with MS-Dos FDISK on real dos-hardware, only.

That's what I did. MS-DOS FDISK will create the partition, but then MS-DOS will hang on reboot, because kernel boot code doesn't know how to handle it via Int 13h. (ROM BIOS Int 13h reports 0 heads, making the disk appear with a size of 0 Mbyte.)

> "If you want install ms-dos - just install ms-dos (in dos-way)".

I second that in general, but not for the Transcend card and the OmniBook 800.

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Forum admin

> It seems to be more complicated:
> I wiped the CF card and installed EZ-Drive 9.09W yesterday. Then I
> installed MS-DOS 6.22. All looked fine. No delay or hang, but then it came
> back. This time more annoying, because it locked up the laptop completely.
> I had to reboot every time.
> So maybe the card (or the CF-to-2.5" IDE adapter) is broken (a little).
>
> > It does not happen with the 2GB maxflash card.
>
> I'll test the maxflash card now for a longer period to check, if this
> problem also occurs.

I still didn't check, but I got a little tired of the topic and computers at all. Real life happened meanwhile.

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Forum admin

> > Make partitions with MS-Dos FDISK on real dos-hardware, only.
>
> That's what I did. MS-DOS FDISK will create the partition, but then MS-DOS
> will hang on reboot, because kernel boot code doesn't know how to handle it
> via Int 13h. (ROM BIOS Int 13h reports 0 heads, making the disk appear with
> a size of 0 Mbyte.)
>
> > "If you want install ms-dos - just install ms-dos (in dos-way)".
>
> I second that in general, but not for the Transcend card and the OmniBook
> 800.

Was this the procedure you followed ?

1) boot to DOS and create the partition(s) with DOS FDISK
2) before rebooting, format the partition(s) with DOS FORMAT
3) now reboot to DOS

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--
http://glennmcc.org/

> Was this the procedure you followed ?
>
> 1) boot to DOS and create the partition(s) with DOS FDISK
> 2) before rebooting, format the partition(s) with DOS FORMAT
> 3) now reboot to DOS

Of course not, because FORMAT requires to give a drive letter on the command line. Drive letters are only assigned at boot time.

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Forum admin

> MS-DOS FDISK will create the partition, but then MS-DOS
> will hang on reboot, because kernel boot code doesn't know how to handle it
> via Int 13h. (ROM BIOS Int 13h reports 0 heads, making the disk appear with
> a size of 0 Mbyte.)

Strange, because FDISK+FORMAT also must work via INT 13h, only

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Make DOS great again!

Carthago delenda est, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse.