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Trying to get DOS 6.22 on an SD Card, to then run via an ISA IDE to SD Adapter on my Commodore PC-10 III, but It doesn't wanna boot. What am I doing wrong? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 6 months ago by Mr_Mofu@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

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I have been following the exact steps as outlined in this tutorial video, with no oddities happening along the way: https://youtu.be/twQbHWJF7LA

Well, I was able to follow it up and until we got to the Partitioning part, where he says to load DOS up in the machine, presumably meaning the PC-10 in this case.

The PC-10 loads the ISA IDE to SD Adapter just fine, it even tried to look for Drive C (The SD Card) for like 10-15 seconds, until giving up then and there (as seen in the pic). (ISA IDE to SD card Adapter i got:)

In other words it seems that the Adapter either doesn't recognise what is on the Card and I've done something wrong in burning the provided image onto it or formating, or it doesn't recognise the card itself to begin with. Its a Brand new 32GB SanDisk SD so that be pretty suprising...

In other words... im out of ideas... i tried different DIP switch configurations and all, but no change. Perhaps the PC-10 III Simply doesnt like the Adapter... or can't run 6.22... im just out of ideas and frustrated. I've had this thing for over a month now with no luck in seeing it run once properly, and original 5,25" DOS Bootdisks are expensive and take a while to arrive. Should I just bite the bullet and go for one? I don't know. Any advice is much appreciated...

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[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Would FreeDOS work ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDOS

[–] Mr_Mofu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I did think of that too after DOS failed, but from what I can find there only seems to be a floppy based installer for it? Since It doesnt have a working 3,5" drive, I can't install it via that. That or have I overlooked something while looking into it? Is there a way to burn it into an SD Card?

[–] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

https://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/Main_Page#How_do_I_install_FreeDOS? There's more options than a floppy based installer to try.

[–] Mr_Mofu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

As far as I can see, the only one of these relevant to my XT Based PC-10 III would be the classic version which reads

For classic hardware: FreeDOS 1.3 includes a floppy-only edition! This edition should run on any original IBM PC system, including the PC, XT, and AT. Provides versions for 720kB, 1.2MB, and 1.44MB floppy disks.

Since it says its a floppy version, I'd asume I'd have to burn it onto a floppy and then install it? Or can I burn it onto the SD and then somehow boot it into the installer directly?

[–] drwho@beehaw.org 2 points 6 months ago

There has to be a way of getting FreeDOS onto the SD card. Way back when, there used to be ways of getting a floppy disk (and hard drive, I did it a few times) bootable with the SYS command to write the boot files to the right places. That was MS-DOS, though.

Hmm.

This article seems like it could be helpful.. It's for creating a disk image, not a drive, but the commands should work if you substitute in the SD card you want to use.

Please note that I haven't actually tried any of this. I'm at work and trying to pull together what scraps of knowledge I still have from my DOS days into something that seems coherent. This might not work, so please treat it as kicking some ideas around over coffee right now!

ms-sys basically does the same thing that format /s and sys a: used to do back in the days of DOS. That makes a drive bootable. So, you'd partition and format your SD card as VFAT or FAT32 from your box (I don't know if you have a Linux box or a Windows machine, or what). I'm guessing it'd be something like this:

sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

# New DOS disk label
o

# New partition.
n
p
1


t
c
a
1
w

Format the partition on the SD card:

sudo mkfs.vfat -c -v -F32 /dev/mmcblk0p1

Then use ms-sys to write the MBR to the SD card.

sudo ms-sys --mbrdos /dev/mmcblk0p1

Mount the SD card. Download FreeDOS and uncompress it. I think that would be FD13-FullUSB.zip. There doesn't seem to be a downloadable archive of "Here's all the stuff that's in the disk image," just the disk image. Some gymnastics do seem to be required to mount it:

sudo losetup /dev/loop0 FD13FULL.img
sudo fdisk -l /dev/loop0

Disk /dev/loop0: 512 MiB, 536870912 bytes, 1048576 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device       Boot Start     End Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/loop0p1 *       63 1048319 1048257 511.8M  e W95 FAT16 (LBA)

The gymnastics in question have to do with mounting a partition of the disk image, because you can't just set up the disk image and manipulate it like a disk device. In this case, it's calculating where to mount the FreeDOS partition: sector size * first sector == 512 * 63 == 32256

sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0
sudo losetup -o 32256 /dev/loop0 FD13FULL.img
sudo mount /dev/loop0 /mnt

From there, it looks like you'll have to look at /mnt/setup.bat to figure out how to do a manual setup of FreeDOS on the SD card. There is also a /mnt/FDOS-x86/SETUP.BAT file that I think will have to be read through to get the process figured out.

Again, this is all theoretical. I've no idea if it'll work without tinkering with it on real hardware. It's as close to figuring out how to do a manual installation as I have time for right now.