Gerry Hickman wrote:
Hi Mark,
"I just got a brand new computer with WindowsXP. I want
to install FreeDOS on that computer but I don't
want to change my WindowsXP installation."
I've never really understood this.
1. Nearly anything you'd ever want to do in FreeDOS can be done without
going anywhere near a hard drive or it's o/s. It's very easy to create a
bootable FreeDOS CD or bootable FreeDOS data stick and just run your
programs from there.
Actually, unfortunately not for the ham radio applications I use at
least. I need to be able to write to the hard disk while maintaining
real-time performance for sending morse code, so...The USB sticks are
too slow if they work at all...BIOS support is very flaky for them on
lots of machines.
2. Anyone who is interested in FreeDOS would insist on re-building any
PC that ever landed on their desk. The first thing I do to an XP machine
is run FreeDOS FDISK with the /clearall option. You don't want the
disease of XP anywhere near your lovely new PC. Even if you do want XP,
you can simply create a bootable partition formatted as FAT to "install"
FreeDOS and then put Windoze on the next partition and so on. Anyone who
runs a PC with only one partition is a fool, but unfortunately Microsoft
recommend this exact strategy to the OEMs and guess what ... the OEMs do
what they're told!
This procedure takes ten minutes. Re-installing Windows XP, installing
all of the applications I have on this machine, and reconfiguring
everything would take days...not just hours. Even just doing the
backups to an external hard drive would take hours...then, restores
would also take hours.
Another option for anyone serious about FreeDOS is simply add a second
hard drive; it's cheap, and it's a lot easier and much safer in terms of
disaster recovery and you can also use it for swap file etc.
Yes, a second harddrive works fine for desktop computers. Not so
well on laptops though (like this one).
Mark
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