5 ms·
To use an LBA HDD or especially a SSD as well as DOS can, I've always found that the DOS from W98SE, with the 2001 update, is about the most reliable. The only
by fuzzfactor 2y ago
To use an LBA HDD or especially a SSD as well as DOS can, I've always found that the DOS from W98SE, with the 2001 update, is about the most reliable.
The only repeatable way when ongoing testing is underway is to zero the media each time, since many times DOS will rely strongest on what is already there during a Format or SYS. So will every version of Windows, but without full consistency at all.
If using Win10 or 11, you may find that even with a zeroed floppy or HDD partition when you power off, the partition will be silently formatted just as Windows last remembers it when you reboot, transparently without notice.
Plus even with successfully zeroed media, there is often a difference in what the Format comes out like depending on whether you booted the PC to an actual floppy, HDD, or SSD, and what their geometry was. And this can often come out different on different motherboards because of their dissimilar bios recognition of what the geometry is and what will be compatible with potential booting on that particular device.
Other times it seemed like some bioses were not suitable for formatting some media well enough to be bootable on their own device. But worked just fine if formatted on a more "universal" motherboard, then boot fine on the problem PC.
These days I want my FAT32 volumes, which are often being used as boot volumes as expected under UEFI, to be fully formatted under DOS for best reliability. None of the intentionally lesser stuff ever since. But I also want my structure to align with 4096 byte sectors which really helps with AF HDDs and SSDs. DOS won't do this on its own. Plus Windows mostly defaults to putting the bootsector at 2048 now instead of 63 on LBA gear, so I format a zeroed FAT32 partition using Windows 10 or 11 first. Then to the disk editor where everything is re-zeroed except the bootsector and the following 8 sectors. Edit the bootsector & backup bootsector (6 sectors later) for 2048 Hidden Sectors. And 2048, 4096 or a multiple of 4096 Sectors Per Fat, depending on which multiple is closest to the value that was there by default (according to the size of the partition) when there was no awareness of SSDs.
Then back to DOS and Format /Q, on a good motherboard it will retain the values you edited in, and you've got a more reliable foundation for your boot files or anything else.
- jhoechtl 2y ago> If using Win10 or 11, you may find that even with a zeroed floppy or HDD partition when you power off, the partition will be silently formatted just as Windows last remembers it when you reboot, transparently without notice. Tell us more about that
- accrual 2y agoI have a USB floppy drive with a known good disk in it. Not sure if a regular 34-pin floppy would be any different. But blanked it, connected to Win 11, and rebooted. The drive seeked on startup, but otherwise it's still blank: dd if=/dev/rsd1c | hexdump -C 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| * 2880+0 records in 2880+0 records out
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoDoes FreeDOS do better? It has the distinct advantage of being actively maintained.
- jayofdoom 2y agoFreeDOS is good, but it's a different flavor of DOS and not everything directly lines up. It's certainly where I'd start if I needed a DOS, but I'm sure there are things it won't work with.
- snvzz 2y agoThere is Svardos as well, with EDR-DOS kernel, enhanced DR-DOS. That DOS was already the better one back then.
- lproven 2y agoI've been playing with it recently. https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/23/svardos_drdos_reborn/ It's a lot comfier and more familiar in some ways than FreeDOS, and I have a little hobby project based on it. https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos
- snvzz 2y agoIt's lovely, and can run Win 3.1 in 386 mode. I am hopeful Freedos will also get there. I believe it is there already with out of tree work.
- lproven 2y agoI believe so, yes. I tried WfWg 3.11 but on reflection it was a bad version to try, what with 32-bit file access and so on. It didn't start successfully. But saying that, I ran and supported Windows 2.01, 3.0 and 3.1 in production. If I never seen any of them running again I will not be sorry. I have zero nostalgia for them, or indeed, for CP/M either.
- bananaflag 2y agoAre you familiar with MS-DOS 7.1 by Wengier Wu (China DOS Union)?
- vintagedave 2y agoI was not. Some googling shows a DOS based on Win95SR2 / Win98SE's (?) with unknown changes, possibly just the copyright string or setup, possibly more? Eg: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware/c/UEz0wn4_DFM/m/8jkW9cTi_0AJ?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware/c/UEz0... If you have more info I'd be very interested in hearing about it. I also have no info on the China DOS Union.
- bananaflag 2y agoYou can download it here https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/7x https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/7x
- dosman33 2y agoHeh, reminds me of the days I kept Win95 and Win98 DOS boot disks for emergency booting Windows machines.
- M95D 2y agoJust use RFORMAT by Rudolph Loew. It can properly align FAT12/16/32 on any block size you want. It doesn't use reserved sectors for that. It only enlarges FAT tables so that the first cluster begins at block size boundary. It can also do all sort of weird formats: reserved sectors, any cluster size you can think of, set root dir size, number of FATs (having only one FAT improves wear on flash memory), etc. https://rloewelectronics.com https://rloewelectronics.com
- fuzzfactor 2y agoThanks for that, it does look quite elegant. RIP Mr. Loew. There is a todo shown: >? added Partition specific Geometry setting >? add docs for above >Add warning about Letter Assigners in DOS and Windows > Force LogOnly and set size >Geometry needs to be set to match Partitions settings. What I've found using recent Windows is that Diskpart will autocorrect the CHS figures based on what LBA changes you make when using other apps, but you have to use Diskpart to "touch" that particular partition after you make the changes, preferably after a reboot. When I need this done without other modifications, I use Diskpart's SetID command, where you type "Help Setid" to get the Diskpart syntax doc on it, but tha command is like "SET ID=de" (with a space there) to change the partition type. To type DE for instance, a "Dell" OEM type. The CHS correction happens silently. Then change it back to type 0C if FAT32, or 07 if NTFS, or basically what you had before. If you check the structure I'm using, both FATs are written in the same stroke on the size mostly found in UEFI boot volumes :)
- M95D 2y ago>Add warning about Letter Assigners in DOS and Windows That's because of my bug report. I used Letter Assinger v1.2.0 by Vadim Burtyansky and tried formatting a partition from Win98. The wrong partition was about to be formatted. Mr. Loew investigated and found the bug in the Letter Assigner, not RFORMAT. > Diskpart will autocorrect the CHS figures based on what LBA changes you make when using other apps. I saw many partitioning programs do that. Most ask for confirmation, some don't. It's great that you know how to edit partitioning table and FAT parameters by hand, but why waste time when there are tools that offers (probably) the same flexibility? For partitioning, I use Ranish Partition Manager. RPM and RFORMAT are the best partitioning/formatting tools by far. Too bad I have to use a boot stick to run them. And too bad nobody wrote something as capable as RPM for Linux. mkfs.vfat comes close to RFORMAT, but none of the partitioning tools are as capable as RPM. > If you check the structure I'm using, both FATs are written in the same stroke on the size mostly found in UEFI boot volumes :) I don't care. I don't have UEFI.