Re: Things you forget...
- From: "Robert E. Watts" <nothome@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 14:11:19 -0400
Hi Bill !
It has been so long since I set up a straight DOS machine that I have
forgotten many things. I have a 100mhz machine with a 400mb drive that
I want to set up running Dos 5 or better (still need to get disk images
to do this) and I have forgotten how to setup certain things. In
particular, setting it up so it sees the CD drive, sound blaster card
and the mouse port (it has a ps/2 mouse on the motherboard). Can anyone
point me to some good text on how to do this,
Sure. Here is your *text*. :-) ( In order )
First, I highly recommend Dos 6.22. Much better than Dos 5.0, but, some
people prefer the earlier version because they think it is a little
"cleaner". I happen to think that all the extra features of Dos 6.22 make it
the very best version, especially for a 486 and up machine.
setting it up so it sees the CD drive
Very simple. You need a CD-ROM device driver. Since 1996, I have been using
a "Universal CD-ROM device driver" that almost never fails. Assuming that
you are using a regular ATAPI CD-ROM IDE drive, you simply ( after Fdisk,
format C:/S the C: drive of course ) run the setup program of this driver,
and it does everything automatically. It automatically alters the
autoexec.bat and config.sys files, and installs the driver to a directory
that the two startup files are going to look to. So simple it's idiot proof.
( Matter of fact, I have a "setup disk" that I made, that has all the
necessary programs to Fdisk, format, and load the CD driver, plus other
programs I might need. Fits on a 1.44 flop, and most could be put on a 720k
floppy also. After I do the hard drive prep, I usually do everything else
from CD from that point on. Unless I'm installing Win2000 or WinXP. Then I
install from CD ) You can get a universal CD-ROM device driver from
practically anywhere I would imagine. I haven't done a search yet, but I'm
sure one would turn up after a couple of seconds of Googling. If you have
the driver that came with your CD-ROM drive, you're good to go also.
{{{ If you are using a proprietary old CD-ROM drive that connects to a sound
card, or a SCSI drive, let me know. I'll give you the procedures for that
also. }}
sound blaster card
If you're using a genuine Creative Sound Blaster, great. Dos drivers are
very easy to load, and usually bullet proof. *Most* of the time, ( back
before 1995 ) the drivers were easy to install, and you simply ran setup.
To manually install drivers means that you would have to:
Modify the autoexec.bat files
Modify the config.sys files
Create the directory where the sound card drivers will be so the two files
above will know where to look.
( Occasionally, you might need to go into the SBCONFIG program to "adjust"
the settings. But usually, the Creative installation program is pretty
good. )
If you're using some other type of card, like ESS or Avance, it sometimes
get's messy with DOS drivers. But still, if you persevere, it's doable.
mouse driver
This one is also simple.
You create a directory where you want the mouse driver to live. Or, simply
place the driver in your root directory. Most mouse drivers are something
like:
mouse.com
Then, you insert a line into your autoexec.bat ( damn, or is it the
config.sys line ? ) that reads:
mouse.com
This tells the computer to load the mouse driver automatically when it
starts. Or, if you don't want to do this, you can simply type:
mouse
at the C: prompt after DOS loads if you put the mouse driver in the root
directory. ( C:\) . This will load the mouse driver also. Remember, the
program must have mouse support before a mouse will work in DOS. :-)
are dos images out there for creating boot floppies (would also like
all the extra stuff that came with dos).
The reason behind this is I am setting up the computer to be a Nintendo
game system for my son. We have been using the windows version, but the
dos version is so much simpler.
Maybe. It might be simpler for your son to run the programs from Windows.
With Win 3.11 you could put an Icon on the screen that would start and run
the program. Most DOS programs would run fine from the Windows program
manager, and it's even possible to get them to run pretty good from Windows
95 if you know what your doing. Even Win98. ( I set up a similar rig for my
daughter to run all of her DOS games using a Windows 98SE computer. No big
deal. )
Have fun !
bobwatts
--
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Certain Socket 4 Pentium motherboards
Pentium Overdrive 120/133 Socket 4
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486SX-20MHz CPU
Certain Socket 2,3, or 6 motherboards
etc
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