A new try to boot DOS 6.22 via PXE

Hi friends,

after my tries in the last year (which where all not successful) I tried to solve the problem today...nearly exactly one year later

I want to boot DOS 6.22 directly from the LAN to install to my local harddrive.

For that I created an floppy-image with help of the tool "easyboot" for the size i choosed 10MB.

After that I copied all files from the 3 original installation discs from DOS 6.22.

My conf file for loading the image is the following:

label dos
menu label DOS 6.22
kernel /images/syslinux/memdisk
append initrd=/images/dos/DOS.img floppy

When I boot the image the DOS start screen appears, but it says "please insert install disc 1 in floppy drive",

so it seems to be, that my computer doesnt "believe" that it has an floppy image.

Is there any chance to fix this problem ?

Thank you very much
tondo

Let's review what you did:

For that I created an floppy-image with help of the tool "easyboot" for the size i choosed 10MB.

OK. (provided that it is actually a floppy image I don't use that tool).
You shoud make sure it is a floppy image.
(like try opening it in IMDISK or WINIMAGE and see if it asks to connect ot a partition)
But if it mounts with the floppy option of memdisk it should be allright.

After that I copied all files from the 3 original installation discs from DOS 6.22.

You do understand that this will NEVER boot to DOS, but rather to the DOS SETUP, don't you?
(no prob , but he title of this thread is about booting DOS and NOT "DOS Setup" or "Intiating DOS install")

My conf file for loading the image is the following:

label dos
menu label DOS 6.22
kernel /images/syslinux/memdisk
append initrd=/images/dos/DOS.img floppy

OK.

When I boot the image the DOS start screen appears, but it says "please insert install disc 1 in floppy drive",

Sure , this is normal.

so it seems to be, that my computer doesnt "believe" that it has an floppy image.

WRONG.
Simply (choose one):

• the DOS setup cannot recognize the memdisk mapped image as being part of the set that contains the install files
• the DOS install is hard coded to A: and your memdisk mapped drive gets another letter in DOS (or memdisk maps it anyway as HD and not as floppy).

Is there any chance to fix this problem ?

YES.
http://homepages.tes...no-answers.html

I would rate them at 83.79% but this won't help you much.

(Temporarily) modify the autoexec.bat inside the 10 Mb floppy image.

I have not handy a set of 6.22 disks, but there should be something that is run automatically, like "setup" or "setup.exe" or setup.bat" or "install" or something like that in last line of autoexec.bat.

REM it out, you should be able to boot to a command prompt.

What drive letter gets the memdisk mapped image?
It is very probable that it needs to be A:\ ( see here for reference):

http://www.windowsre...ll622/page1.htm

IF I recall correctly (but a lot of time has passed since) floppies were identified by a "tag file" like disk1, disk2, or something similar to that (0 byte files)

If you cannot find *quickly* a way using the built-in setup, it would probably be easier to setup the DOS manually.


Wonko

Hi,

If i remember this correctly Dos 6.22 can't be used as boot disk on PXE because it always get stuck on the boot process, only a boot disk generated by Windows 98 (Dos 7), Windows ME, Windows XP or FreeDos will work.

___
Rui Paz