IBM

I have the upgrade CD for PC-DOS 7 and IBM had a batch file called cdtodisk.bat which pulled files off the CD and generated a set of seven floppies you could install with should your machine lack a CD drive. I need PC-DOS 7 in particular for the additional PCMCIA and pen support my 730TE tablet has. My copy of version 6 seems to lack it.
My issue is that it's one picky as hell batch file. It doesn't work in a prompt under 9x, Warp 4 spits out a bit of garbage but doesn't run it and 2K/XP tries to work with it and seemingly copies the files over but fails at a number of tasks I assume are not supported by the NT command line and I'm left with disks I can't boot with. The most verbose thing I can get out of it is...

!!! THIS BATCH FILE SHOULD BE RUN FROM A DOS SESSION !!!
!!! IF YOU ARE RUNNING OS/2, BOOT DOS THEN RUN THE BATCH FILE !!!

...which confuses me as I already tried running in a full screen DOS session and again, nothing happened.
Paging hamei......anyone?

Have you tried exactly what it says on the tin: run it from DOS? (actual DOS, not a DOS session in OS/2 or within DOS running in Windows)

I've only had a quick look at the batch file but I've noticed a few things:

1. The first line is '@echo off'. You can delete that line (or put REM in front of it to comment it out) to cause the file to print each command before it is executed. That might help debug where it is failing.
2. The syntax of the 'format' command (at least under XP) is very different from what it used to be. The batch file passes both the '/U' and '/AUTOTEST' flags which are no longer documented as being available in XP. The format command will also stop and prompt you to label the disk manually unless passed the '/v:' option which is missing in the batch file. So there's a little work to be done to modernize those lines of the batch file. I'd start by just getting rid of '/U /AUTOTEST' and adding '/v:' to all of the 'format' lines and see where that gets you.
3. The syntax of the 'attrib' command may not work as used in the batch file. Under XP, it is documented that the +S +H +R options should come before the file name but the batch file puts the file name first. So this may or may not work as-is in XP, but it's an easy change if it doesn't.

It should, however, be possible (but tedious!) to run the commands manually to create the necessary disks by hand if you can't get the batch file updated to work on something more modern. There may be more problems than I've noticed, but the batch file is actually pretty straightforward using mainly 'echo' and plain 'copy' commands. The copying part could easily be done in a GUI file manager if you prefer. There are only a few echo commands where the output is redirected to a file so you could use your text editor of choice to create the 4 files (disk.num, autoexec.bat, config.sys, and blistlay.out) by hand. There isn't any complex logic or looping in the batch file that would preclude a manual approach.

And how are you calling the batch file? It should be run as 'cdtodisk X: A:' where X: is your CD drive and A: is your floppy drive. Running it without specifying those may cause problems.

calvin wrote: Have you tried exactly what it says on the tin: run it from DOS? (actual DOS, not a DOS session in OS/2 or within DOS running in Windows)

Under OS/2 I'm not entirely sure yet how to start just a DOS session and even if I do, a problem I find to be globally applying is that the CD-driver is not loaded at boot, hence you can't read the disc.

pentium wrote:

calvin wrote: Have you tried exactly what it says on the tin: run it from DOS? (actual DOS, not a DOS session in OS/2 or within DOS running in Windows)

Under OS/2 I'm not entirely sure yet how to start just a DOS session and even if I do, a problem I find to be globally applying is that the CD-driver is not loaded at boot, hence you can't read the disc.

If you can find a W95 or W98 boot/install floppy, they usually have a range of CDROM drivers that are extracted to a RAM disk. Takes a while, but you should get a MSDOS 7.xx environment and CDROM support. If you have esoteric hardware, you may need to play with config.sys/autoexec.bat files and include your own driver.

Or, as you mention W9x, hit F8 during boot-up to get the menu - from vague memory, there's a DOS-prompt-with-network-support option which I'd imagine would also load CDROM drivers. Perhaps something equivalent is available under OS/2?

If not too late...

To create a bootable MSDOS 6/7 floppy with CD-ROM support you need mscdex.exe (messy decks ... MicroSoftCompactDiscEXtensions).

iirc... in DOS6 and Win9X (not 2000, XP or NT!), you created a bootable floppy by typing



This created a bootable system floppy disk which could boot into DOS, and then to get the CD drive working you had to copy over and start mscdex.exe with the correct arguments from the floppy. This is done by adding the correct syntax to config.sys and autoexec.bat on the floppy and then booting it... really sorry but this was a while ago and I can't remember what the syntax was (I don't even think I understood it at the time anyway so just copied it from config.sys/autoexec.bat on a working system) so maybe look in those if you have current working DOS/win9X system. I think they were pretty generic settings, other vendors also had their own versions, but mscdex worked for all my CD drives at the time.

I did this regularly because I didn't have an original boot disk (and tended to reuse my boot disk for general data stuff once I had a working system), and my system install cd wasn't an original bootable one (I believe it was a special version which had Memorex 750MB CDR written on it).

I may have an old one in my pile of useless yet sentimental crap. I will have a look in which case I could tell exactly what syntax to add to config.sys and autoexec.bat.

Hope this helps.

Of all things I found a physical copy of DOS 7 so in the end I gave up trying to write images from the CD.

I installed PC Dos 7 last weekend on my mega-retro-586 games machine!

Need to dig out a sound blaster out the loft next.