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DOS Boot-loader or Boot Manager suggestions...

Will that work with FAT32 though, Stones file system of choice by the looks, considering MSDos lower than 7.x doesn't support it natively?

Probably just better of running various version of dos in one of the many VMs available.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
I just need a little clarification here. Are you trying to boot different versions on the same partition? Assuming that they're all MS-DOS and not a mixture of MS- and PC-DOS (which would require different boot sectors), you could do it within a single partition using nothing more complicated than MS-DOS. Simply copy MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT of the desired version to the root and reboot.
Click to expand...
Yes, you got it correctly summed up. But you can't just copy MSDOS.SYS AND IO.SYS... they need to be SYSed and that means booting from each appropriate DOS disk. Copying just won't cut it -- you know that. :) If I wanted to to that I could just leave it the way it is and boot from whatever floppy version of DOS I wanted to use at that moment. But I want to be able to choose a version of DOS from many versions when I boot and that requires something like GRUB or some other boot manager or loader. And, other than GRUB, it requires each version to be on it's own partition. And, since I don't do Unix/Linux, GRUB is like Chinese. :)
 
Caluser2000 said:
Will that work with FAT32 though, Stones file system of choice by the looks, considering MSDos lower than 7.x doesn't support it natively?

Probably just better of running various version of dos in one of the many VMs available.
Click to expand...
Hey, I'm not glued to FAT32 here. DOS 6.22 is fine -- I have lots of drives to use for such purposes. I can dedicate one to this venture.
 
I'm pretty sure that that's certainly not the case for later version (post 3.0) of MS-DOS--just over-copy an existing installation. But to demonstrate to myself that I'm not having brain rot from too much celebrating, I'll give it a try.

DOS 1.x and 2.x and probably some early versions of 3.x probably have FAT12 or similar disk size restrictions. I did forget to include COMMAND.COM in my list of files.

But let me try....
 
Assuming that they're all MS-DOS and not a mixture of MS- and PC-DOS (which would require different boot sectors), you could do it within a single partition using nothing more complicated than MS-DOS. Simply copy MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, CONFIG.SYS, COMMAND.COM and AUTOEXEC.BAT of the desired version to the root and reboot.
Click to expand...


That has never worked for me (copying the hidden+system MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS files). Unless I'm misremembering, I thought there were certain conditions that had to be met, such as must be first and second directory entries, must be contiguous and adjacent to each other, etc. I suppose a quick test can confirm that, but I could've sworn it wasn't that easy.
 
Caluser2000 said:
There's a grub variant for Dos https://sites.google.com/site/grubdos/
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That's already been discussed twice in this thread and the answer is the still the same... I don't know Linux/Unix! But gimme a few hours and I might have it figured out. :)

Trixter said:
That has never worked for me (copying the hidden+system MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS files). Unless I'm misremembering, I thought there were certain conditions that had to be met, such as must be first and second directory entries, must be contiguous and adjacent to each other, etc. I suppose a quick test can confirm that, but I could've sworn it wasn't that easy.
Click to expand...
Ditto...

Chuck, brain rot is insidious.
 
Trixter said:
[/COLOR]

That has never worked for me (copying the hidden+system MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS files). Unless I'm misremembering, I thought there were certain conditions that had to be met, such as must be first and second directory entries, must be contiguous and adjacent to each other, etc. I suppose a quick test can confirm that, but I could've sworn it wasn't that easy.
Click to expand...

The MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM have to be in the first sector of the boot directory. Older versions may require one or more files to be contiguously allocated, but let's find out. What with MSDOS 6.0 source freely available, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
 
Okay, I set up a floppy to swap between MSDOS 7.1 and 5.0. The gotcha is that you also have to copy the appropriate system files, but also copy the boot sector code that loads the system--that stuff between 003E and 01FF in the boot sector. Simple enough--and it works very well.

Basically you set up as many directories as DOS versions you have with the relevant system files as well as any version-specific command files and AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files. Set up a batch file to copy the system files, boot sector code and CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and you're in business--and you never left DOS to do it.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Okay, I set up a floppy to swap between MSDOS 7.1 and 5.0. The gotcha is that you also have to copy the appropriate system files, but also copy the boot sector code that loads the system--that stuff between 003E and 01FF in the boot sector. Simple enough--and it works very well.

Basically you set up as many directories as DOS versions you have with the relevant system files as well as any version-specific command files and AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files. Set up a batch file to copy the system files, boot sector code and CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and you're in business--and you never left DOS to do it.
Click to expand...
That's great! Sounds good. Could you post the batch file that copies the boot sector code?
 
Maybe I missed something, but wouldn't the easiest way to do this be to just create multiple bootable floppy disks (e.g. one with 6.22, one with 5.0) which simply have the command "sys c:" in the autoexec.bat?
 
The goal is to have a hard disk menu, aka boot manager, that loads whatever OS is wanted from the HD. If you're gonna use a bunch of floppies you can just boot from the individual floppies directly. And, by using your method, you'd need to boot the system TWICE to get the desired OS to boot. :)
 
Well, you only have to boot from floppy once unless you want to switch DOS versions again. ;)

Also, from my understanding, this is exactly what Chuck suggested, too: a bootable floppy disk that let you switch DOS versions.
 
Floppies are out! I've already got that covered.

I want a program that presents a HD menu for a variety of OSes. Something like Grub4DOS (only not in cryptic {to me} Linux/Unix) or a DOS boot manager/boot-loader that doesn't require separate partitions for each version of DOS. But I'm beginning to think that a boot manager with the separate partition requirement is what I'm going to have to use at this point.
 
Stone said:
I want a program that presents a HD menu for a variety of OSes. Something like Grub4DOS (only not in cryptic {to me} Linux/Unix) or a DOS boot manager/boot-loader that doesn't require separate partitions for each version of DOS. But I'm beginning to think that a boot manager with the separate partition requirement is what I'm going to have to use at this point.
Click to expand...

Or, get System Commander. It does exactly what you are asking for.
 
If my memory doesn't make fun of me, I used to use the OS/2 (3 Warp) boot manager to boot different DOS versions.
 
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