Some further questions BELOW to complete the distribution media database:
}:-)
1) Which ones were available on 5.25"??? (and how many disks?)
????????A) "360K"?
????????B) "1.2M"?
????????C) "1.4M"?
????????D) Microsoft non-standard crammed 3.5" HD? (1.7M?)
On Fri, 23 Jul 2021, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Ugh ... I don't know and I don't have a good way to differentiate my disk
images.
Well, maybe similarly to how you did with AIX, by the total size divided
by number of images. Although what I was referring to was people's
memories of the size of the box that they kept the install disks in :-)
First CD-ROM install media that I got was Windows 3.00, but it was an
inclusion on a "tools" collection CD-ROM (not quite a shovel-ware). Then a
Multi-Language 3.00 CD-ROM from Microsoft (for international market)
I would like to know more about, or better find a copy, of such a CD-ROM.
The "Tools" CD-ROM was a third party commercial product containing a large
collection of CD-ROM drivers.
In August 1991, I attended a Microsoft Developer conference in Seattle.
Bill Gates didn't show up, because he was in NYC on TV about the birthday
of 5150 (August 11, 1981). They gave us copies of Windows 3.10 (which
couldn't load on the 286 laptop that I had brought along, because it
didn't have A20 support, and gave those of us who asked that international
distribution Windows 3.0 CD-ROM. Never saw it before or since. It had
Windows 3.0 installation with at least half a dozen different languages.
I do wish that I could do an install of MS-DOS 6.22, CD-ROM driver +
MSCDExec, DOSidle, and Windows 3.x on a CD-ROM for simplifying installations
in virtual machines.
I've not yet figured out how to put all of the install files for MS-DOS 6.22
in one directory, boot and do the install. My minimal passes at doing so
don't work as well as I want or get stuck wanting to change the disk based on
the disk label.
Actually, you can, and easily.
MS-DOS 6 had an "INSTALL" program, which was demented. It INSISTED on
installing on drive C:. But, some of my machines had four floppies, and I
didn't want it to install on the 8" drive, or 3.25" drive, . . .
Once you install it on SOME/ANY OTHER machine, then, with that OTHER
machine booted up to DOS 6, just do a FORMAT A: /S of a boot floppy, and
copy files onto that, specifically including FORMAT.
FORGET ABOUT THE "INSTALLATION" files. with extreme prejudice.
Boot your target machine with the DOS 6 boot floppy; it has FORMAT.COM
on it (which IIRC was actually a .EXE file renamed .COM), and then use
that to FORMAT C: /S .
Once that system format is done, and CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are up,
then all of the rest is just copying files, which can be COPY *.*.
The Chinese lady that I shared an office with was thrilled, because she was
trying to teach herself Spanish, and that, along with the McCracken FORTRAN
in Spanish were here preferred method.
~chuckle~
For learning any language, it helps a LOT to have a copy of something that
you are familiar with in that language. When she started to learn
Spanish, I gave her a copy of McCracken FORTRAN in Spanish (she was
familiar with, and had a copy of, the English edition), and loaned her the
international Win3.0 disc. She then setup one machine with Win3 in
English, one in Chinese, and one in Spansish.
Win3.0 could run on an 8088, which were then a dime a dozen.
I don't know whether you could put more than one copy on a machine. I
think that you could - we had a copy of Win3.1 on a Win95 machine!
3.10 Windows CD-ROM from Microsoft
Interesting.
But, the Windows 3.10 BETA program sent us tons of floppies.
It had an even more demented problem: it installed Smartdrv first. Then,
if it hit any error, the installation would fail, without the usual option
to IGNORE and manually copy the failed file later. Instead, SMARTDRV cut
out the options, and you could only R(etry)! If the error wasn't
transient, then you could only power down the machine! But SMARTDRV had
told DOS that stuff was ALREADY written that it hadn't done yet, so
powering down wiped the whole installation. I had one machine that had an
error that neither SpinRite nor SpeedStor could find, but the Windoze
installation consistently found it! The work around was to put a lot of
extraneous files on the disk, so that the sector with the error was used
by something else. I reported the problem to the BETA support; their
response was "That's a HARDWARE problem, NOT OUR PROBLEM." My comment
that 1) any program should exit gracefully even from a hardware problem,
not lock up the machine and 2) that SMARTDRV's actions would end up costing
them substantially. (It DID; DOS 6.20 was written primarily to deal with
SMARTDRV causing problems!) 'course my comment also meant that I wasn't
invited back for any other BETA programs; they only wanted cheerleaders,
not critics nor actual testers.
When did MS-DOS come on CD-ROM??? Or did it?
Does MS-DOS 7.x; read Windows 95 / 98; count? ;-)
maybe.
I don't know if any of the other Microsoft products, likely NT Server,
included MS-DOS installation files buried on the CD-ROM or not. There are
often interesting things if you know where to find them.
Microsoft C compiler Version 5.00 on CD-ROM
#unknown
It eliminated another LARGE box of floppies.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
