Re: Anyone have the service guide for a Sanyo VM4209 monitor?
So that place was legit... That was my concern with those sites out there. They were top google hits and all seems a little too scam like. It seemed more like when you search for an old part and all those "resellers" come up with "stock" and all they are doing is sourcing from one guy in Europe and tacking on extra and a minimum quantity. Good to know for the future and more importantly that it took a month. Thanks again, Cheers, Corey corey cohen uǝɥoɔ ʎǝɹoɔ > On Jan 26, 2017, at 8:15 PM, Al Kossow wrote: > > it took a month but http://www.manuals-in-pdf.com did finally come through > with a manual > i stuck it up on > https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98434900/VM4509_SM_SANYO_EN.pdf > for now > > On 1/24/17 5:32 PM, Santo Nucifora wrote: > >>> I need the schematics. I'm not sure I trust all those "manual" sites on >>> the web that want to sell you a PDF for $15. >>> > >
Re: recursive emulation (was: IBM 7074 and then some: "Systems we love" conference)
On 24 January 2017 at 18:46, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: > This allowed us to figure out that an 8 MHz ARM2 would be able to > run PC programs at nearly the speed of a 4.77 MHz 8088. Though there > were much faster PCs at the time, the original configuration was still > being sold and was popular enough that this would have been considered > usable. It was usable enough that Acorn sold a PC Emulator for the Acorn A305/A310 -- the original, first-series Archimedes with 8MHz ARM2 chips. E.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20021213050437/www.maxandanna.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pcem.htm I used it on my A310, in 1988/1989, to do real work in QuickBasic 3.0, brought home from the office. It ran at something around 2-3MHz as equivalent to an original 8088 PC, but with a much faster screen and hard disk, so overall performance was good and quite usable for MS-DOS stuff. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
Re: recursive emulation
On 25 January 2017 at 00:19, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: > In the RiscPC era they used actual Intel processors instead of (or was > it as an alternative to) software emulation. The Risc PC had a 2nd processor slot. It wasn't able to be a full SMP machine, but there were options for a 2nd ARM chip (which would have to be custom programmed), a 3rd party multiprocessor board: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_UpgradesH2Z/Simtec_Hydra.html ... Or Acorn's own official "PC card". http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/5x86-Risc-PC-PC-Card/ I actually have 2 or 3 of these, boxed, awaiting restoration of my RiscPC. The card didn't do much for RISC OS, but allowed a native-CPU-speed PC emulator app. The card had a real processor, but used software-emulated I/O -- disks, screen, sound etc. -- so it wasn't very compatible. It would run MS-DOS, Windows 3 and 95. Win98 very slowly with significant caveats. Win95 ran in a minimally acceptable mode, using "MS-DOS disk and file access" -- in other words, dropping to BIOS calls, as there was no real disk or screen hardware for its VxDs to address and control. There is/was a commercial app to use the PC Card's onboard FPU to accelerate RISC OS FP operations: http://www.wss.co.uk/products.html#FPEPC This is only faster on ARM6/ARM7 RiscPCs, though. StrongARM machines could do faster FP in software. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
Re: IBM 7074 and then some: "Systems we love" conference
On 1/26/2017 8:37 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: Even the phrase "shipped" need not be when the customer starts printing out the nine billion names of god. That was a printout ... not card I/O. (1953, so it predates the 7074) Great Story! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: Looking to read past EOT on DDS/DLT/LTO
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 09:01:21PM -0500, Paul Koning wrote: > > > On Jan 26, 2017, at 1:23 PM, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > > > > On Wed, 25 Jan 2017, Nico de Jong wrote: > > > >> I did some research, and the most reasonable outcome was that it was not > >> possible by normal means, because some algorithm reading synchronisation > >> data couldnt find out what was happening, so, the backup was ruined. > > > > Odd. This would imply you couldn't wind a tape past a medium error and > > read what's behind, but I surely did it a couple of times with DDS tapes. > > That's a good point. Can it really be true that a tape error that creates a > false EOT results in the loss of all remaining data? Surely the designers > weren't *that* stupid? It could with drives with built in compression. -- - d...@freebsd.org d...@db.net http://www.db.net/~db
Re: ISO: Documentation for a Northern Scientific NS-600
There is a small chance someone at Nicolet may remember this Tracor/Northern was in Middleton, very near by. I don't remember if this was the origin of their DSO line http://www.theoscilloscopeshop.com/nicolet-oscilloscopes.html On 1/26/17 11:07 PM, Josh Dersch wrote: > http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/ns600
Re: Looking to read past EOT on DDS/DLT/LTO
Also, prior to servo tracks on serpentine drives, there was a full-width erase head, so if you rewrite from BOT, ALL tracks are erased as it rolls to EOT. The trick with killing power on 8mm and DAT works because they use helical recording. On 1/26/17 6:29 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 01/26/2017 06:01 PM, Paul Koning wrote: > >> That's a good point. Can it really be true that a tape error that >> creates a false EOT results in the loss of all remaining data? >> Surely the designers weren't *that* stupid? > > It happens. You can't skip over it or even space to EOT and then read > backwards. Some "intelligent" drives were really stupid. > > --Chuck >
Re: Anyone have the service guide for a Sanyo VM4209 monitor?
> On Jan 26, 2017, at 17:15, Al Kossow wrote: > > it took a month but http://www.manuals-in-pdf.com did finally come through > with a manual > i stuck it up on > https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98434900/VM4509_SM_SANYO_EN.pdf > for now Thanks for sharing that, Al. One of these days, I hope to get a monitor to go with the manual. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: ISO: Documentation for a Northern Scientific NS-600
Found this on http://www.biotechprofiles.com/madisonCompanies/legacy/default.aspx Tracor Northern Founded as Northern Scientific in the early 1960s by William F. Buffo and Robert Schumann (who also founded Nicolet). In 1966, the company was sold to Tracor Inc., adopting the name Tracor Northern In mid-1980s, Tracor Inc. was purchased by Westmark Inc. In 1990, Tracor Northern changed its name to Noran Instruments when Westmark Inc. sold its instrument division to Baker Hughes Inc. In 1994, Noran's 200 person Madison operation was acquired by Thermo Electron's Thermo Instrument Systems (fka Nicolet Instrument Corp.). Wayne Sudol Riverside PressEnterprise A DigitalFirst Media Newspaper. On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:57 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > There is a small chance someone at Nicolet may remember this > Tracor/Northern was in Middleton, very near by. > > I don't remember if this was the origin of their DSO line > http://www.theoscilloscopeshop.com/nicolet-oscilloscopes.html > > > On 1/26/17 11:07 PM, Josh Dersch wrote: > > > http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/ns600 > >
Re: Looking to read past EOT on DDS/DLT/LTO
Hi, Maciej mentioned "winding a tape past a medium error and read...". I have several times successfully skipped past media errors on DDS-1 drives by doing a FSF (Forward Skip File ... tells drive to skip to the next EOF). (Although, IIRC, once I encountered a read error, I couldn't do that ... I recall having to 'sneak up' on the error by positioning the drive to the prior EOF and then skipping forward. But since I haven't done it for more than 10 year, maybe my memories are classic, er, rusty.) My recollection is that DDS-1 (and perhaps -2?) had 'set marks' that few people knew about, and even fewer ever used. The explanation I recall is that the drive could do a "forward to next setmark" *much* faster than "forward to next EOF". (BTW, when reading, a setmark was reported like an EOF (although if you requested extra status you could tell them apart).) I never tried using the skip-to-next-setmark to get past errors, partially because the tapes I was recovering years ago didn't have setmarks. (Set marks are one reason I prefer my tape archiving format, since I record them, as well as retry information :) Al: thanks for expanding my answer about cutting out a portion of the tape ... I'd forgotten about helical recording. (Note that on ordinary multi-track tapes, cutting a section does indeed lose data from n different places on the tape ... any tape that requires multiple passes over the tape to get from BOT to the full capacity of the tape.) Stan
Re: Looking to read past EOT on DDS/DLT/LTO
On 01/27/2017 03:41 PM, Stan Sieler wrote: > My recollection is that DDS-1 (and perhaps -2?) had 'set marks' that > few people knew about, and even fewer ever used. The explanation I > recall is that the drive could do a "forward to next setmark" *much* > faster than "forward to next EOF". (BTW, when reading, a setmark was > reported like an EOF (although if you requested extra status you > could tell them apart).) I believe that ANSI refers to them as "partitions", IIRC, defined by a special page in the MODE_SELECT command. Each partition has its own EOD. Using the MODE_SENSE code page 11h will turn up information as to a tape bing multi-partitioned. Few people made use of the partitioning feature, as far as I know. All of this is doubtless covered by one or several ANSI X3B5 pubs. --Chuck
I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
Yippie! But what a long haul it was. Just getting the data on a disk that I could read was a nightmare. I bought a USB 3.5 floppy drive (Sabrent SBT-UFDB, $19 at Frys), and it does not write 720K reliably. Comments on the net say it does not work, under windows 7 lots of errors, but bringing up in Linux (Fedora) it sort of does work. Remember to unmount so that it flushes the data out to the floppy! After several back and forth tries with abort, retry, fail errors, I finally got xtidecfg to run on the target (Compaq model 1, the luggable XT). Next, I could not flash the EEPROM. Turns out I had one 74F573 in upside down. $100 Digikey overnight later, I got one (several, I spared all the parts and the EEPROM just in case). OK now XTIDE comes up on boot, and responds with the timeout screen and lets me select the floppy for the boot. I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are the next steps? FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on it? Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? Thanks to anyone who has been there and done this... Randy
Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
I just did this for cards based on the Lo-tech CF card adapter in both a original XT and also a PC Convertible (5140) . I found that not all CF cards work especially on the version in the Convertible, but can greatly increase the likely hood of success buy wiping the first few "cylinders" of the CF card. Then boot DOS from a diskette , first run fdisk make sure the partition you create is marked as active, then format with the /S option to transfer the system files over. I rarely had to do the fdisk /mbr. I was playing with cards from 16MB up to 4GB and even a 4GB microdrive. I settled on a 256MB card which is plenty for DOS. I got some 128MB and 256MB cards on eBay really cheap. Paul. On 2017-01-27 9:16 PM, Randy Dawson wrote: Yippie! But what a long haul it was. Just getting the data on a disk that I could read was a nightmare. I bought a USB 3.5 floppy drive (Sabrent SBT-UFDB, $19 at Frys), and it does not write 720K reliably. Comments on the net say it does not work, under windows 7 lots of errors, but bringing up in Linux (Fedora) it sort of does work. Remember to unmount so that it flushes the data out to the floppy! After several back and forth tries with abort, retry, fail errors, I finally got xtidecfg to run on the target (Compaq model 1, the luggable XT). Next, I could not flash the EEPROM. Turns out I had one 74F573 in upside down. $100 Digikey overnight later, I got one (several, I spared all the parts and the EEPROM just in case). OK now XTIDE comes up on boot, and responds with the timeout screen and lets me select the floppy for the boot. I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are the next steps? FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on it? Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? Thanks to anyone who has been there and done this... Randy
Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Randy Dawson wrote: I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are the next steps? FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? It is not clear what you are attempting to do. If you have a drive that looks like an XT drive with controller to the computer, and it has not been used before, then MS-DOS would normally want a low-level-format, which presumably does not need to be done in this case, and for which FORMAT.COM is absolutely no help, anyway. Low-level-format was done by IBM's "Advanced Diagnostics", or by third party programs, or by doing a jump to code in the ROM of the controller. If it doesn't need low-level-format, then the next step is partitioning (or do you already have a FAT16 partition on it?), for which you use FDISK. NOT FDISK /MBR. FDISK when it creates the partition, will create the partition table and Master Boot Record in the first sector. MS-DOS from V2.00 to V3.30 is limited to 32MB. Compaq MS-DOS 3.31, and any MS-DOS 5.00 and above supports up to 2GB drives. FAT16 in NTFS and other systems that support it can go to 4GB. But, MS-DOS uses a SIGNED long 32 bit int, permitting drive sizes from -2147483648 to 2147483647. Yes, there are some parts of MS-DOS that support negative file sizes and drive sizes If it is already low-level-format'ed and partitioned, then FDISK /MBR (which was not always documented) will rewrite the partition table and Master Boot Record. THEN you want to FORMAT x: /S where x: is the drive letter. /S of FORMAT tells it to also put the 3 OS files on it: IO.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) MSDOS.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) COMMAND.COM reasonably "normal" file that can be copied with a "normal" file copy. (Or IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, COMMAND.COM if you were using PC-DOS) At that point, it should be fully bootable! Although some hardware might require specific content in root directory files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT . You should still create a DOS directory, and copy all of the other DOS files into there, such as FORMAT.COM, FDISK.COM, DEBUG.COM, etc. Putting all of those in the root directory will work, but is a bad idea. In early versions of MS-DOS, just about all of the DOS executable programs were .COMLater, as they started to exceed 54K, they started using .EXE, but NAMING them .COM "for compatability". Now, they are probably all .EXE since MICROS~1 can not do a "Hello, World" in less than 64K. What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on it? no idea. I just laid out the MS-DOS steps to prepare a hard disk. Run CHKDSK Find your copies of LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE , which you will need for assembler and compilers. Originally, they came with MS-DOS. Then for a while MS-DOS said that they came with the compiler, and the compiler said that they came with MS-DOS. The MS-DOS executables (including LINK and EXE2BIN) will balk at running on a version of DOS other than what they came with. For THAT, V5.00 includes SETVER , which lets MS-DOS lie about its version for such programs. Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? Need to use DOS V3.31 or above to get past 32MB, other than that, it would be a function of the adapter? and, of course FDISK, . . . Prior to V3.31, the work around was to break up a drive into multiple 32MB partitions. (BTW, MB to FDISK is 2^20 (1048576), NOT the silly numbers used by drive peddlers, such as 1000 * 1024.)
Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
Simple way I got several XT-IDE working: - Boot with freedos boot disk - FDISK /MBR - FDISK and create ONE 31MB partition (note it is 31MB and not 32MB) - Reboot - Format C: /s /u (the /u is very important) - REBOOT. There is a bug on freedos that a copy command gives a heap corruption after a format - Do whatever you want, even creating a D: partition of 2GB This is what I did in many CF cards that didn't worked before. 2017-01-28 0:13 GMT-02:00 Fred Cisin : > On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Randy Dawson wrote: > >> I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering >> iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are >> the next steps? >> FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? >> > > It is not clear what you are attempting to do. > > If you have a drive that looks like an XT drive with controller to the > computer, and it has not been used before, then > MS-DOS would normally want a low-level-format, which presumably does not > need to be done in this case, and for which FORMAT.COM is absolutely no > help, anyway. Low-level-format was done by IBM's "Advanced Diagnostics", > or by third party programs, or by doing a jump to code in the ROM of the > controller. > > > If it doesn't need low-level-format, then the next step is partitioning > (or do you already have a FAT16 partition on it?), for which you use > FDISK. NOT FDISK /MBR. FDISK when it creates the partition, will create > the partition table and Master Boot Record in the first sector. > > MS-DOS from V2.00 to V3.30 is limited to 32MB. > Compaq MS-DOS 3.31, and any MS-DOS 5.00 and above supports up to 2GB > drives. > > FAT16 in NTFS and other systems that support it can go to 4GB. But, > MS-DOS uses a SIGNED long 32 bit int, permitting drive sizes from - > 2147483648 to 2147483647. Yes, there are some parts of MS-DOS that > support negative file sizes and drive sizes > > > If it is already low-level-format'ed and partitioned, then FDISK /MBR > (which was not always documented) will rewrite the partition table and > Master Boot Record. > > THEN you want to FORMAT x: /S where x: is the drive letter. > /S of FORMAT tells it to also put the 3 OS files on it: > IO.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > MSDOS.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > COMMAND.COM reasonably "normal" file that can be copied with a "normal" > file copy. > (Or IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, COMMAND.COM if you were using PC-DOS) > > At that point, it should be fully bootable! > Although some hardware might require specific content in root directory > files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT . > > You should still create a DOS directory, and copy all of the other DOS > files into there, such as FORMAT.COM, FDISK.COM, DEBUG.COM, etc. > Putting all of those in the root directory will work, but is a bad idea. > In early versions of MS-DOS, just about all of the DOS executable programs > were .COMLater, as they started to exceed 54K, they started using .EXE, > but NAMING them .COM "for compatability". Now, they are probably all .EXE > since MICROS~1 can not do a "Hello, World" in less than 64K. > > > What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on >> it? >> > > no idea. I just laid out the MS-DOS steps to prepare a hard disk. > > Run CHKDSK Find your copies of LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE , which you will > need for assembler and compilers. Originally, they came with MS-DOS. Then > for a while MS-DOS said that they came with the compiler, and the compiler > said that they came with MS-DOS. > The MS-DOS executables (including LINK and EXE2BIN) will balk at running > on a version of DOS other than what they came with. For THAT, V5.00 > includes SETVER , which lets MS-DOS lie about its version for such programs. > > > Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? >> > Need to use DOS V3.31 or above to get past 32MB, other than that, it would > be a function of the adapter? and, of course FDISK, . . . Prior to V3.31, > the work around was to break up a drive into multiple 32MB partitions. > > (BTW, MB to FDISK is 2^20 (1048576), NOT the silly numbers used by drive > peddlers, such as 1000 * 1024.) >
Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Alexandre Souza wrote:
Simple way I got several XT-IDE working:
- Boot with freedos boot disk
- FDISK /MBR
- FDISK and create ONE 31MB partition (note it is 31MB and not 32MB)
It SHOULD be possible to create an almost 2GB partition with DOS 3.31 or
above. Has to be "almost 2GB", since size is -2147483649 to 2147483647,
instead of 0 to 4294967295 ("almost 4GB")
31MB means that that partition is probably FAT12, usable even with DOS
2.00 to 3.30.
Why the FDISK /MBR , particularly followed by FDISK ? That rewrites the
Master Boot Record, which includes the partition table, which is then
also done by the FDISK.
FDISK /MBR (formerly undocumented) was very handy by itself for removing
boot sector virus, without altering anything else.
- Reboot
not normally required in MS-DOS; a FREEDOS quirk?
- Format C: /s /u (the /u is very important)
/u was added with 6.00? prevents FORMAT from paying attention to previous
content, and objecting if you format different parameters
- REBOOT. There is a bug on freedos that a copy command gives a heap
corruption after a format
That's too bad. Not normally required with MS-DOS.
- Do whatever you want, even creating a D: partition of 2GB
Prior to DOS 3.31, there were some third party DOS extenders for larger
drives, even some kludges to use MSCDEX (network redirector in 3.10 and
above) to make that computer see the drive as being on a network instead
of local (the way MS-DOS could see a 2/3 GB CD-ROM)
Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?
Thanks Alexadre! I thought I was so close when I finally got XTIDE to recognize my flash card. FDISK worked OK too. FORMAT did not, and the error was: Drive not ready I thought there was something else wrong, my bus size on XTIDE config, who knows. I reflashed, but that failed, locking me up. Pull JP1 to get it to boot, then put it back on while power on, got me back up to reflash and clear the errors. Reducing the partition size in FDISK did the trick. FORMAT C: /S put the system on and now I boot from the flash! Thank you so much. Randy From: cctalk on behalf of Alexandre Souza Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017 8:13 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what? Simple way I got several XT-IDE working: - Boot with freedos boot disk - FDISK /MBR - FDISK and create ONE 31MB partition (note it is 31MB and not 32MB) - Reboot - Format C: /s /u (the /u is very important) - REBOOT. There is a bug on freedos that a copy command gives a heap corruption after a format - Do whatever you want, even creating a D: partition of 2GB This is what I did in many CF cards that didn't worked before. 2017-01-28 0:13 GMT-02:00 Fred Cisin : > On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Randy Dawson wrote: > >> I have a Compact Flash adapter and card, while I wait for the soldering >> iron to heat up and make the power cable for it, I wanted to ask, what are >> the next steps? >> FORMAT, or FDISK /MBR? >> > > It is not clear what you are attempting to do. > > If you have a drive that looks like an XT drive with controller to the > computer, and it has not been used before, then > MS-DOS would normally want a low-level-format, which presumably does not > need to be done in this case, and for which FORMAT.COM is absolutely no > help, anyway. Low-level-format was done by IBM's "Advanced Diagnostics", > or by third party programs, or by doing a jump to code in the ROM of the > controller. > > > If it doesn't need low-level-format, then the next step is partitioning > (or do you already have a FAT16 partition on it?), for which you use > FDISK. NOT FDISK /MBR. FDISK when it creates the partition, will create > the partition table and Master Boot Record in the first sector. > > MS-DOS from V2.00 to V3.30 is limited to 32MB. > Compaq MS-DOS 3.31, and any MS-DOS 5.00 and above supports up to 2GB > drives. > > FAT16 in NTFS and other systems that support it can go to 4GB. But, > MS-DOS uses a SIGNED long 32 bit int, permitting drive sizes from - > 2147483648 to 2147483647. Yes, there are some parts of MS-DOS that > support negative file sizes and drive sizes > > > If it is already low-level-format'ed and partitioned, then FDISK /MBR > (which was not always documented) will rewrite the partition table and > Master Boot Record. > > THEN you want to FORMAT x: /S where x: is the drive letter. > /S of FORMAT tells it to also put the 3 OS files on it: > IO.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > MSDOS.SYS (hidden file that must be in specific location) > COMMAND.COM reasonably "normal" file that can be copied with a "normal" > file copy. > (Or IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM, COMMAND.COM if you were using PC-DOS) > > At that point, it should be fully bootable! > Although some hardware might require specific content in root directory > files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT . > > You should still create a DOS directory, and copy all of the other DOS > files into there, such as FORMAT.COM, FDISK.COM, DEBUG.COM, etc. > Putting all of those in the root directory will work, but is a bad idea. > In early versions of MS-DOS, just about all of the DOS executable programs > were .COMLater, as they started to exceed 54K, they started using .EXE, > but NAMING them .COM "for compatability". Now, they are probably all .EXE > since MICROS~1 can not do a "Hello, World" in less than 64K. > > > What is the recommended way to initialize the CF flash and put a system on >> it? >> > > no idea. I just laid out the MS-DOS steps to prepare a hard disk. > > Run CHKDSK Find your copies of LINK.EXE and EXE2BIN.EXE , which you will > need for assembler and compilers. Originally, they came with MS-DOS. Then > for a while MS-DOS said that they came with the compiler, and the compiler > said that they came with MS-DOS. > The MS-DOS executables (including LINK and EXE2BIN) will balk at running > on a version of DOS other than what they came with. For THAT, V5.00 > includes SETVER , which lets MS-DOS lie about its version for such programs. > > > Anything special to do, so that I can use the whole 2GB of the flash? >> > Need to use DOS V3.31 or above to get past 32MB, other than that, it would > be a function of the adapter? and, of course FDISK, . . . Prior to V3.31, > the work around was to break up a drive into multiple 32MB partitions. > > (BTW, MB to FDISK is 2^20 (1048576), NOT the silly numbers used by drive > peddlers, such as 1000 * 1024.) >
