computer setup

klem kedidelhopper wrote in news:6a53b993- snipped-for-privacy@y12g2000vba.googlegroups.com:

Dos 6.22 and fat32 do not go together. Extract dos 7 form the install floppy of win98SE, and away you go, edit autoexec and config to get rid of unwanted stuf. I have used that for years at work. On the net and on the install cd you can find dos utils for wim98, including ansy.sys and such. You might search at M$ site for a new FDISK.EXE, which can format the current harddisks. Yell here if you still miss pieces.

As usual, MICROS~1's crap sucks compared to what else is available--for free.

BUT, it's not 100% compatible. Maybe 99.99999% but not 100%. I made the mistake of using it for a laptop to run programs from "the big M" if you know what I mean (not Microsoft) and occasionaly they crash, where they don't with DOS.

I expect that if you don't know what I am talking about, it won't matter, and FreeDos is a lot easier to use as it includes many utilities and features that Microsoft DOS does not.

Drive letters BTW, are not C and D on the same drive if there is more than one drive, it's C is the boot drive, D is the first partition on the second drive, E is the second partition on the second drive and so on........

You may also want to use Windows 95 or 98 instead of DOS. They both include FAT32 disk support and when they are running in Windows mode include support for network cards and Windows 98 second edition inlcudes some USB support.

Both can be run in "DOS" mode where they boot the base operating system, which is really DOS 7, and not the GUI.

You can get drivers for some network cards for DOS, but they eat up too much memory to run the big M programs.

There is a program from the early days of DOS caled prn2file, which lets you save print data in a file instead of printing it. So when I need a record of what's been done, I run it to redirect the printout to a file, start my DOS program, print the reports and then run the program with no parameters to close out the file.

Then I reboot in Windows with the GUI, and connect to a networked printer.

On one laptop I have, I do the same thing with DOS in one partition (installed first) and then Windows XP in the second partition. Windows boots and gives me a choice of booting DOS or XP. I then have a wifi card in the PCMCIA slot, and use XP SP3, as it has good wifi support. You can get drivers for some cards (usually 802.1b) for Win98 but the connection utilities suck.

Geoff.

Seriously, am I missing something, or is this software running for the sake of some old software that won't run on anything else?

I went so far as re-writing some very fussy VB Win16 software that flatly refused to run on anything other than Win3.1 (this was in the Win'98 era, and we didn't have any 3.1 boxes left). Ironically, I wrote the "new" code in pascal (DOS based software), which in all likelyhood pre-dated that VB compiler) AND I had to reverse engineer the RS232 communications protocols (the hard way) even though the original software came from the company I was working for anyway. (obsolete product, and couldn't find the source backups).

ife.

This incompatibility issue between one era and another really pisses me off. Some of us just live a simple life and really only just need the basics for certain things. But they've managed to engineer it so that nothing old will work with anything new anymore. This is no accident I'm convinced. What puzzles me though is that It seems like I've done this before. I know that I've used 98 with 6.2 on the same computer, (well different computers when one crapped out), for years. Some of them were smaller hard drives like a few hundred meg or so. Could that have changed anything? I may not have ever noticed this discrepancy between what Bios is saying is there and what "My Computer" actually shows. And this other issue. I can never get to my D or my E drive in Dos. I really don't want to have to access my Dos programs through Windows however if I'm running a Dos program would I be able to see everything and get to them if I went to a Dos prompt from 98? Thanks, Lenny

If you removed everything else I wrote, why did you leave my name?

I have no idea what the original poster wanted to do, but that's what I use it for.

The software is for programing devices where the protocol is not published, nor has ever been reverse engineered so writing a replacement is not possible.

The software will not run on a fast computer, nor will it run in a DOS box, DOS emulator, etc.

Geoff.

In all honesty, from my experience, this is not the case. To be fair, it certainly *LOOKS* like engineered obsolescence, but as far as I can see, it's short-sightedness, incompetency, bad choices, miss-management, or a combination of the above.

In our case, it would be easy for me to blame Microsoft for the more than crappy compiler (and boy, was it ever a POS) however, at least part of the blame has to go towards the guy who chose and bought it in the first place.

And sure, you could blame me too for using an ancient compiler that used *hardware* calls to access the RS232 com ports. That said, I had been using and testing it on windows 2000, which *properly* did not like software going behind its back and talking to hardware directly. And it STILL worked. My guess, was it was going to continue to work. Actually, I have another piece of software that used the same RS232 hardware routines to talk to another device, and that one I use now. Under win7, and it still works, so that other software would probably work. If the hardware still existed of course... So in my defence, at least I tested forward compatibility.

Don't think so. The FAT32 thing was mentioned in this thread, and it's quite plausible. It had support under 95 and 98, though with 95 you had to format the drive from the start. 98 came with a utility that "converted" your partition to FAT32. And it had to be specially selected for smaller drives because by default it would not let you choose FAT32 if your drive was smaller than a certain size.

I can agree with the other posters about the FAT32 thing. It's a very plausible theory without actually checking. So it would be well worth checking while booted in 98. Run "FDISK /STATUS" from a dos prompt. Note, I had to get that from google, as I've LONG since forgotten how to use fdisk.

I have no idea about the missing B: floppy under 98. Drive letter assignments are not flexible on floppy drives, so it *should* see it just fine (considering it works under dos).

Yuppers, As that midget Napoleon said, "Never ascribe malice to that which can be attributed to incompetency."

Jeff

Not quite the case. After C: and D: as above, E: (F:, G: etc) will be the partitions on the first HD and THEN follow the partitions on the second HD.

an one

drive,

So at the risk of sounding like a dummy, is the FAT a function of the particular hard drive or is it a function of the operating system? And in my previous question, would a much smaller drive have a FAT 16 system that would be happy in the same bed as DOS 6.2? I need to run

If someone could please explain the FAT system with respect to Windows and DOS I would be very grateful. Lenny

one

drive,

FAT is the 'File Allocation Table', and it tells the OS where files are stored.

You can bump up that computer to a 500Mhz pretty easy by getting an AMD Athlon 500Mhz processor and setting the multiplier to 2. With an AMD when the multiplier is set at 2 it is automatically recognized as 6 by the processor. Set the clock speed at 83Mhz. Multiply 83 X 6 = 498. Speed test software will usually show 501Mhz.

I just happen to have a new processor I can let you have for $15.00 American and $5.00 shipping in the U.S., if you're interested.

What kind of MB do you have? Do you have the manual? Some MB are configurable through the BIOS.

You can usually download a manual from the internet if you know the exact type of MB.

Post a reply if you're interested and we'll work out communications.

than one

d drive,

As Michael Terrell said the FAT is how the OS finds files. The OS defines which version of FAT it uses. FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS can all be on the same physical drive in separate partitions. I used to run multiple OSs and had similar problems and got around them by using Partitionmagic and Bootmagic to set up 3 partitions on the hard disc. The first 2 were both 2 GB FAT16 and the 3rd was the remainder of he disc as FAT32. At boot time Bootmagic gave a choice of DOS 6.22 or Win98SE. The 3nd FAT 16 partition was visible to both OSs and used as a 'transfer' block where you could place files for exchange between the OSs. For example a file in DOS to be emailed using Win98 was first placed in the transfer zone and reboot into Win98 and do the email operation. I still have an Athlon 3200 machine dual boot DOS6.22 or Win XP Pro, also with the transfer partition. I had an Athlon XP machine at my last job that had DOS 6.22 in a FAT16 partition, Win98SE in a FAT32 partition and Win XP pro in an NTFS partition with a 4th FAT16 transfer partition visible to all OSs. It used Bootmagic to select OSs and defaulted to XP if you didn't make a selection

The newer machines with the Phenom II chips will 'sort of' run DOS. The boards no longer support DOS upper memory blocks (DOS high UMB) so it's limited to 640K - that's it.

Don't know if this helps but it may give some ideas.

Happy Thanksgiving

G=B2

Strictly speaking, neither. When the drive is formatted under a particular operating system, the formatting is one the OS recognizes, such as FAT16 for DOS, NTFS for NT-based systems, etc.

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Well here's the thing, I know that I did not format this master. I don't recall if I ever formatted this slave. I'll explain. I bought a machine from a guy for a dollar to use for parts. The machine was working but it was a much lesser machine than this one is as I recall. It had a working copy of 98 on the hard drive so I figured that it was just the thing I needed to run my DOS billing program, wordperfect, (WP51 for DOS).

I set that drive up in this computer as a master and then set up another drive that had my program and files on it that was failing, as a slave and although I couln't save the progam (luckily) through DOS I managed to copy all 1200 billing files onto the master. A friend sent me another copy of Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS, I installed that onto the master and then copied the 1200 files onto it. This restored my program. So after this I removed the flaky slave and installed another physical drive of questionable origin and then through 98 copied the entire WP folder from C to E. So now I have a backup copy on another physical drive. I thought that this would be a prudent.endeavor. Now that I'm out of the woods for the time being, I'll work on building another computer with two formatted drives, and duplicate what I have on this one now. Since I built this one I have also obtained a 98 SE CD. So now I can start that new system from scratch. I know that all this may seem silly for a DOS program however I'm used to the program, and I like it so I really don't want to switch. Besides I like working in DOS. I feel like I'm actually speaking to the machine as opposed to answering "OK" or "yes" or "no" in Windows. Thanks to everyone who is helping me. I reallly appreciate it. Have a happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it, and watch out for the "turkeys". Lenny.

Yes. ...and as others have explained, the File Allocation Table is a table of contents for a drive.

Yes (no "or" needed). The OS being used has to support the filesystem in order to use it, obviously.

There's also a FAT12, commonly used on floppies. There's also the "VFAT" extension to FAT, which is what allows long filenames; that has to have OS support too, obviously.

Linux, as a prime example, supports DOZENS of filesystems.

Linux has supported MICROS~1's crappy filesystems for years and years now. (The last kink was getting reliable NTFS writes going; that utility went gold in 2007.)

M$'s crappy filesystems (which don't use proper permissions)