booting in dos

cophamguy · Post by **cophamguy** » Wed May 03, 2006 5:05 pm

i am an idiot...

how do i boot in dos? i tried F8 during startup and esc during startup. i get the BIOS screen

i KNOW i am missing something stupid.

RKG · Post by **RKG** » Wed May 03, 2006 5:28 pm

You probably aren't an idiot, but you may not be old enough to have learned to love, or at least to live with, DOS.

To run Motorola DOS-based RSS, your machine must run a native DOS operating system, either MS-DOS 6.22 or PC-DOS 7.0. You cannot get to native DOS via Windows, and this includes both the "DOS Window" (or Run|Command) function and the "Exit to DOS" function. Neither gives you native DOS and, in particular, neither permits an application to take hardware control of the UART chip, which the RSS requires.

What you have to do is dedicate a machine to DOS, acquire DOS installation disks, and install DOS from scratch. This doesn't require a Ph.D, only a bit of patience and a set of install disks.

cophamguy · Post by **cophamguy** » Wed May 03, 2006 5:35 pm

AH HA!!

cool. so, i am not an idiot. I just need to download the dedicated dos or otherwise purchase it retail.

I was under the false impression I could direct the computer to boot only dos and not into windows. Thank you for your help.

...any ideas where i might download pc dos 7.0?

RKG · Post by **RKG** » Wed May 03, 2006 5:55 pm

So far as I am aware, neither MS-DOS (Microsoft) nor PC-DOS (IBM) is available any longer from the original vendors. I seem to recall that MS-DOS is available from Internet sites, but I can't certify that.

jwb8734 · Post by **jwb8734** » Wed May 03, 2006 6:06 pm

http://www.bootdisk.com/

You need a boot disk this is the place.

Johnny Galaga · Post by **Johnny Galaga** » Thu May 11, 2006 10:14 am

I have used both WindowsME and WindowsXP on my computer, and with a WinME boot disk insterted into my A drive during startup, I've always been able to get my computer to boot into pure DOS mode.

Post by **wavetar** » Thu May 11, 2006 11:54 am

Johnny Galaga wrote:I have used both WindowsME and WindowsXP on my computer, and with a WinME boot disk insterted into my A drive during startup, I've always been able to get my computer to boot into pure DOS mode.

Getting into "pure DOS" isn't really the problem, the problem with XP is most OEM providers sell their boxes with XP formatted as NTFS, not FAT32. When formatted as NTFS, you cannot access the "C" drive (or whatever letter your hard drive is on your particular machine) when you boot into DOS...be it by boot disk or whatever. This limits the RSS you can use to those which can reside & run off a floppy. Fine for a lot of it, but not so good for MTSX, MCS, Astro, etc.

A couple of solutions are to reload the XP computer with the FAT32 filing system, or try booting from a DOS-bootable USB stick if your hardware allows.

Todd

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Thu May 11, 2006 12:34 pm

.. . . .. .. . or repartition the drive so you can actually INSTALL DOS for a dual boot setup, then actually have the software right on a partition in FAT.

videonerd · Post by **videonerd** » Thu May 11, 2006 8:55 pm

I run the freeware XOSL to dualboot my machine

http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

.. that being said, see my other post for my how come everything except MTSX RSS works...