Add a Win98 boot disk menu to DOS 6.22 - China DOS Union Forum

I just started learning DOS recently and installed DOS 6.22. I found it had too few features and didn't support the CD-ROM drive or virtual disk, so I wanted to add those features myself. I only had a Win98 boot disk on hand.

After thoroughly studying what's inside it, I made an installation script myself.

I tested it in VMware. The method is to boot into DOS, load the uploaded floppy disk image, then type b.bat in drive A:. It will write files to drive C: by itself.

Take out the image and reboot, and that's it. The effect is pretty close to the 98 boot disk, and the menu colors are decent too. Everyone can give it a try.

Now let me talk a bit about what I learned and my experience making it:

The stuff in config.sys and autoexec.bat is relatively easy to change, basically just adding some CD-ROM and virtual disk drivers, changing some environment variables and so on.

The key thing I want to mention is setramd.bat and the variable LglDrv. This kept me busy for quite a while. In the original Win98 version it is:

LglDrv=27 * 26 z If your hard drive only has drive C:, an error will occur, and you'll get cdrom= as an empty result.

If LglDrv=26 z, then if the hard drive only has drive C:, cdrom=e RAMD=d, and no error will occur.

At :do_shift I set a breakpoint there, and after displaying cdrom I discovered the above result.

:do_shift
echo on
set cdrom=%2
echo %cdrom%
pause

shift
shift

Later I displayed how the values of %1 %2 ....%9 changed after every two shifts, and found that after shift reached 5 E, shifting again caused an error. I guessed it might be a problem with this DOS 6.22 version. You can set as many as 27 * 26 z .....3 c variables, but the variables effective for shift

are only 42 total, that is, up to 5 e. Everything after that gets discarded!!

This is my first post. I don't know how to upload attachments, so I'm just giving an address to download it from.

Finally I want to ask, how is the setup.exe program on the installation disk made? I want to integrate my image into it, but when I open dossetup.ini it turns out to be garbled text!!

In my space it's 1670.rar

http://upload.cn-dos.net/img/1670.rar

.

Floor1　d175834807	Posted 2009-08-28 02:27
新手上路　Posts 2　Credits 8
I just started learning DOS recently and installed DOS 6.22. I found it had too few features and didn't support the CD-ROM drive or virtual disk, so I wanted to add those features myself. I only had a Win98 boot disk on hand. After thoroughly studying what's inside it, I made an installation script myself. I tested it in VMware. The method is to boot into DOS, load the uploaded floppy disk image, then type b.bat in drive A:. It will write files to drive C: by itself. Take out the image and reboot, and that's it. The effect is pretty close to the 98 boot disk, and the menu colors are decent too. Everyone can give it a try. Now let me talk a bit about what I learned and my experience making it: The stuff in config.sys and autoexec.bat is relatively easy to change, basically just adding some CD-ROM and virtual disk drivers, changing some environment variables and so on. The key thing I want to mention is setramd.bat and the variable LglDrv. This kept me busy for quite a while. In the original Win98 version it is: LglDrv=27 * 26 z If your hard drive only has drive C:, an error will occur, and you'll get cdrom= as an empty result. If LglDrv=26 z, then if the hard drive only has drive C:, cdrom=e RAMD=d, and no error will occur. At :do_shift I set a breakpoint there, and after displaying cdrom I discovered the above result. :do_shift echo on set cdrom=%2 echo %cdrom% pause shift shift Later I displayed how the values of %1 %2 ....%9 changed after every two shifts, and found that after shift reached 5 E, shifting again caused an error. I guessed it might be a problem with this DOS 6.22 version. You can set as many as 27 * 26 z .....3 c variables, but the variables effective for shift are only 42 total, that is, up to 5 e. Everything after that gets discarded!! This is my first post. I don't know how to upload attachments, so I'm just giving an address to download it from. Finally I want to ask, how is the setup.exe program on the installation disk made? I want to integrate my image into it, but when I open dossetup.ini it turns out to be garbled text!! In my space it's 1670.rar http://upload.cn-dos.net/img/1670.rar .

Floor2　DOSforever	Posted 2009-08-28 09:52
金牌会员　Posts 2,239　Credits 4,639
I don't know whether the DOS 6.22 you installed was a full installation, or just a system. If I remember right, it seems CD-ROM support has existed since MS-DOS 5.0. Of course, it doesn't come with a CD-ROM driver itself; you have to load one yourself. As for virtual disks, those were supported very early on too. I don't remember exactly which version, but at least vdisk.sys was already there from 3.3 onward, and only later was it replaced with ramdrive.sys.