MS-DOS bootdisk with CD-ROM support

[3155ffGd]

All of the NT releases (well, almost all) on the FTP only have the CD itself, but no bootdisks. So to create bootdisks from the CD, I need an MS-DOS bootdisk with CD-ROM support.

Up to now I simply used the Windows 98 bootdisk for it because it conveniently provides me with CD-ROM support so I can do whatever I need. But the problem is, I'm using PCem-X with the SiS mainboard and for some inexplicable reason, the Windows 98 bootdisk fails to start up. So now I'm stuck with a CD the board can't boot from and no functioning bootdisk.

I could set one up myself by installing MS-DOS and copying the relevant drivers over and doing some config.sys and autoexec.bat magic but urgh, that seems like such a hassle. Surely there must be an easier way? I can't believe I'm the only person with this problem out there, but I don't exactly know where to look...

[Windows OS]

You could try out this bootdisk for MS-DOS 6.22:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/D ... os6.22.img
Link from AllBootDisks.com

[Battler]

But the problem is, I'm using PCem-X with the SiS mainboard and for some inexplicable reason, the Windows 98 bootdisk fails to start up.

1. Which SiS mainboard?
2. Are the floppy drives configured correctly in both PCem-X settings and CMOS Setup?
3. Use this experimental build: http://goo.gl/JYoP4k instead of PCem-X as PCem-X is outdated.

[haroldas.velioniskis]

But the problem is, I'm using PCem-X with the SiS mainboard and for some inexplicable reason, the Windows 98 bootdisk fails to start up.

1. Which SiS mainboard?
2. Are the floppy drives configured correctly in both PCem-X settings and CMOS Setup?
3. Use this experimental build: http://goo.gl/JYoP4k instead of PCem-X as PCem-X is outdated.

1. SiS motherboard is a motherboard with SiS chipset. For example,my old ECS K7S5A v3.1 is SiS motherboard because it uses SiS 735 chipset.

[3155ffGd]

1. Which SiS mainboard?

The Award SiS 496/497.

2. Are the floppy drives configured correctly in both PCem-X settings and CMOS Setup?

The floppy drive coniguration was incorrect but that's not the problem, it fails even with the correct configuration. It appears to start fine but then complains about lack of extended memory, so I get no RAM disk and thus no MSCDEX (and thus, no CD-ROM support).

3. Use this experimental build: http://goo.gl/JYoP4k instead of PCem-X as PCem-X is outdated.

Will do in a moment. My copy is from January and I have no idea if this fixes things but it's always worth trying.

edit: much unsurprisingly, the problem persists even with the newest version of PCem v10.1.

[os2fan2]

The NT disks should have copies of the boot disks in a directory. These are for the i386 version, and usually run to four disks.

If you copy these to the hard drive, you should be able to boot the virtual pc from these images.

It works with 3.51 in a similar way, and i do know that these diskettes can be variously updated too.

[Battler]

The floppy drive coniguration was incorrect but that's not the problem, it fails even with the correct configuration. It appears to start fine but then complains about lack of extended memory, so I get no RAM disk and thus no MSCDEX (and thus, no CD-ROM support).

How much RAM did you assign it?

[3155ffGd]

How much RAM did you assign it?

64 MB, that should be more than enough. Windows 95 ran fine on the same configuration.

[Andi482]

Can you try this bootdisk?:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/downloads/D ... mdrive.img

This disk doesn´t use ramdisk, the mscdex.exe driver is loaded directly from the floppy drive.

But I don´t know why ramdrive.sys doesn´t detect the extended memory. Is himem.sys loaded in config.sys?

[Battler]

- 3155ffGd: Did you put DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS to CONFIG.SYS? Without HIMEM.SYS, RAMDRIVE won't find extended memory.

Edit: Also, try the 430VX PCI.

[3155ffGd]

[s]Oh, it's nothing wrong with the bootdisk itself (after all it ships with Windows 98) and it works fine with other boards; the motivation for selecting this board specifically has to do with having an emulated serial (as opposed to PS/2) mouse.

I have reason to believe it's some sort of emulation bug affecting this particular chipset but there's no way to know.[/s]

edit: actually I was wrong. The Windows 98 bootdisk fails on *every* board in PCem. But it works fine in Virtual PC, for instance.

[Battler]

- 3155ffGd: Could you upload your boot disk somewhere? I'm going to see what exactly goes wrong and why.

[3155ffGd]

It's actually downloadable right here. Just use WinRAR to extract from the EXE file since it will try to write to an actual floppy.

[mallard]

Note that some of the more common MS-DOS boot disks use the device name "BANANA" for the CD-ROM device. While this isn't a problem in general, if you're using it to install Windows NT, it will cause an error when the installer attempts to copy the "BANANA.ANI" file. As this is just an animated cursor and not at all vital to run NT, you can safely skip it, but it's slightly annoying.

To fix it, change the device name in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT (a find/replace will do, you don't really need to understand the files), changing "BANANA" to something else. Traditionally, device names include one or more "$" symbols to prevent conflicts with filenames, so I usually use something like "$ CDROM $" (without the spaces added to workaround one of this forum's "oddities"...).

[os2fan2]

The usual names i see for the cdrom device driver is "MSCD0000". It is a name that you can't use elsewhere, since it is a driver name, and exists everywhere. BANANA or any real word is not a good choice.

You should put smartdrv there too. This is because winnt.exe checks for the existance of 'bambi' (MS code name for smartdrv), and goes dead slow if you don't. It's way better to use the tripple or quad disks of Winnt setup rather than attempting to coax winnt.exe to do the deed for you. MS-DOS has a pain reading the thousand-plus directories you can roll with windows 3.1 or windows nt.

[Battler]

- 3155ffGd: I just tested your boot disk, and it allocates space for the RAM disk without problems.

Edit: And the Award 430VX PCI is a Pentium board with a serial mouse, and it can boot directly from CD. So try that.

[3155ffGd]

Hmm odd. In that case I can only imagine it's some peripherals messing with the memory, otherwise I'd have no idea why it works for you but not for me.

Anyway, thanks for the tip, that board indeed works fine for my needs and boots from CD perfectly. So I guess that problem is solved for now.