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Issue trying to get an SLT 286 to change directory from A to C

safemouse

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Jan 8, 2023
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Hello, I have an SLT 286 I bought a while ago on eBay that boots straight into a shell called ToyBox II. This is not a problem, I have a floppy that boots into DOS 3.30 if I insert it. However, I would like to see what's on the hard drive so I've been typing 'CD C:' and getting an 'invalid drive specification' message. As there is definitely a hard drive (where else would it store ToyBox II and the software it hosts, such as Pinball and The Prince of Persia?) and it appears to function okay I'm flummoxed. Any ideas?
 
While it shouldn’t give an error that the specified drive is invalid, to change from a: to c: you type c: not cd c:
 
It depends. My recollection is that "CD C:" will cause DOS to report the currently logged directory on drive C: without actually changing the currently logged drive. In any case, "invalid drive" with a functional hard drive means that the C: partition isn't recognizable to DOS. You might try booting a later version of DOS, just to eliminate the idea that the error might be version-related.
 
You say you’re booting with a DOS 3.30 floppy; do you know what version of DOS is on the hard drive? If it’s formatted with Compaq DOS 3.31 or later (most likely 5.0+) with a greater than 32 megabyte partition it would be expected behavior 3.30 wouldn’t like it.
 
Thank you so much for all your responses. FIrstly, I don't know how to exit out of Toybox II. If anyone knows please let me know. As I don't know how to exit I have to put a startup DOS diskette into the floppy drive prior to starting the machine and then it boots into DOS. The diskette says 'version 3.30' on it and if I type 'ver' in DOS it tells me it's running IBM Personal Computer DOS Version 3.30. I've tried typing 'C:' and 'CD C:' and both return an 'invalid drive specification' response. I find that quite confusing because the presence of Toybox II and games that are running fine on it indicate that a C drive does exist and is running well.

I'm a total newbie in DOS but at the moment the prompt is showing me an A so I assume it's only going to show me what's on the floppy disk if I type 'dir'. I need to 'move' to C, which I take to be the designated letter for the hard drive, so I can see what's on it and save new applications to it, such as Word for DOS. I would probably like to keep Toybox if it's not too capacious but it's annoying having the machine boot straight into it and then not be able to exit. Any ideas?
 
The diskette says 'version 3.30' on it and if I type 'ver' in DOS it tells me it's running IBM Personal Computer DOS Version 3.30. I've tried typing 'C:' and 'CD C:' and both return an 'invalid drive specification' response.

The issue we're suspecting here is the hard disk may have a newer version of DOS on it than what you have on the floppy. If that's true and the hard disk is formatted in such a way that it's only compatible with this newer version then the disk will not be accessible when booted from 3.30. Do you have any way of creating a boot floppy with DOS 5.0 or later on it?
 
... I just checked, booting my Tandy that has PC-DOS 7 on a large partition for its C: drive from a DOS 3.30 floppy, and I do indeed get "invalid drive specification" if I try to look at the hard disk. I'm pretty confident that's what's going on. If you genuinely cannot figure out how to exit this Toybox II thing and trying to interrupt it starting (you could try laying on the BREAK/CONTROL-C as it's booting) doesn't work they you're going to have to find a newer DOS floppy to get into it.
 
I found a shareware copy of ToyBox II and if the manual is correct, the way to exit is either to press the STOP button or <ALT>+S if the STOP button was hidden.
 

Thank you for your kind suggestions all. I'll have a crack at making an MS boot floppy. I'll have to burn to a CD and then transfer to a floppy on my slightly less vintage Toshiba 4000 running Win 95. As for ToyBox II, if I press Stop it just makes an error sound, if I press alt + s it asks for a password. As I bought this laptop about 4 years ago and have only just got round to testing it I won't trouble the previous owner, if indeed they knew what the password was, as I suspect they had the laptop in storage for a long time. All things considered shall I just attempt to start over and load MS Dos fresh and wipe all contents? Is that witchcraft that a beginner should not attempt?

 
I’m assuming this program is started by autoexec.bat. Depending on the version of DOS you can hold down shift (or was it ctrl) while booting to skip config.sys and autoexec.bat. Later versions allowed you to press F5 to skip everything or F8 to step through.

If you’re running an older version that none of those work, you can try pressing ctrl-c and you can probably terminate the autoexec.bat before it loads the menu program.
 
Hello Jafir. Unfortunately I get a keyboard error message if I try any of those commands besides F5/F8, which is simply ignored. Once the keyboard error message comes up I can only proceed by pressing F1 (at its suggestion) and then it loads ToyBox.
 
Try doing those things right when you see “starting ms-dos” so that you don’t trigger a keyboard error on the power on self test (P.O.S.T.)
 
The F5/F8 keys work only on MS-DOS 6.0 or later; earlier versions do not allow you to skip CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT (although CTRL+C may work).
 
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