Please help me build a DOS only laptop

[Anderegg]

I have some old DOS software that requires REAL DOS in order to communicate with a Motorola product. I can run the software in a DOS "box", but in order to communicate to and from the Motorola radio, I require a REAL serial port and DOS. Attempting to use my serial port with DOS "box" results in a blinking light on my unit and a failure message.

The laptop I am wanting to use for the sole purpose of this Motorola DOS application, is an old 1999 era PIII 500MHz, has CDROM and single USB 1.0 but no floppy drive. Looking for the easiest method to make it DOS only, and have the capability of putting the Motorola program on the hard drive and run it like that.

Any help appriciated!

Paul Anderegg

 

[lxskllr]

How about Win98? I've used that for DOS compatibility, but keeping ease of install.

Edit:
Alternately, you could use an external floppy drive.

 

[Anderegg]

And where would I get a Win 98 disk and product key?

I bought a Win98SE disk back in 2000, don't know where it is, probably thrown in the trash.

Paul

 

[lxskllr]

And where would I get a Win 98 disk and product key?

I bought a Win98SE disk back in 2000, don't know where it is, probably thrown in the trash.

Paul

Someone probably has one they would give, or sell you. Not me unfortunately. I have one copy I keep for emergency purposes, cause you never know when a niche need will arise.

If it were me, I'd try to borrow one from a peer, and if it worked according to my needs, look harder to buy a copy. I imagine there's some on Ebay, or someone here should have an extra.

 

[JackMDS]

eBay has plenty of Win 98se, for sale as well as DOS 6.x

 

[lxskllr]

Here's a search for installing DOS without a floppy. I've never done it, but looking over some of the results, it looks plausible...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=install+dos+without+floppy+drive

There's also FreeDOS which comes as a .iso you can boot to from CD. It may not work for your purposes, but it's free to try...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDOS

 

[Anderegg]

I could only find one Win98SE on ebay and it was $60, yuk.

I now have two working DOS CDROM boot disks. Neither of them allow access to my hard drive. :-(

Paul

 

[JesseKnows]

A simple reason for a DOS boot not able to access a hard drive is if the drive is partitioned FAT32 (one example of Win98 DOS mode being better than real DOS).
If you run DOS's FDISK, can you see the drive and a strange partition, or can the drive not be seen at all?

 

[yinan]

Just use a modern computer and create a virtual machine and pass a serial port through to it.

 

[Anderegg]

Can't do VM.....needs to be real DOS and a real serial port or the Motorola software will not work. nLooks like I will go with Windows 98, since I recall my old laptop I used to program with was Windows 98. Found some new copies on Amazon for like $40.

Paul

 

[yinan]

Why? Inside a virtual machine a passed through serial port is a REAL serial port. The software has no way to tell.

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.google.com/products/cata...=X&ei=kT5vT6CoOYno0gG73bT1Bg&ved=0CJYBEPMCMAI

 

[Steltek]

The easiest way to do it would be to get a Windows 98SE boot CD ISO (just do a Google search, there are plenty of them out there in ISO form). Use the MS-DOS Expand command to expand all the MS-DOS installation files from your diskettes, put them in a folder, and add this folder to the Win98 boot CD ISO. Burn the ISO to a CD, then boot the CD on the laptop. Run FDisk to partition the hard drive. After rebooting and again starting from the CD, run format /S to get system files on the hard drive, and copy the contents of the MSDOS folder from the CD to the hard drive. All you should have left to do then would be to edit your Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files.

 

[Kathi201]

Search in Google you can find DOS with latest version for you laptops.
Thanks

 

[mcsman]

How about a functioning laptop with DOS on it? EBay item 350553785826 $135.00, free shipping, two days left to bid.

Not mine. Seems the easiest way to go.

Dave

 

[AnitaPeterson]

OP, I can give you a free functional, legit Win95 key, if you need it.
It's from an old machine (which has bit the dust in the meantime).
Please PM me if you're serious and interested.

 

[C1]

You could buy a USB Floppy too or you can easily make the first DOS floppy disk into a bootable CD (use Nero or Easy CD Creator typical). (I havent found a way to link the rest of the sequential DOS disks for a complete install, but no doubt someone somewhere already has.) It might be possible to complete the rest of the install manually using the "XCOPY" and "EXTRACT" commands.