Problem Solved !!
A Giant Thank You to Eric Auer and Kenneth J. Davis. Without a floppy
drive present, the drive numbering was wrong, giving the DJ Mechanism
failure message.
FreeDOS install done via ODIN 1.44 floppy, then kernel.sys replaced.
Both kernels listed below worked but I will stick with the stable one.
kernel 1.1.35 (Build 2035b-cvs)
kernel 1.1.35w (Build 2035w-UNSTABLE)
The 1.1.35 kernel works on my test laptops (MPC T1200 and Dell
Latitude D610), the former with 2 primary partitions and the latter
with 3 primary partitions (because we are keeping the Dell
Diagnostics partition).
We now have a completely current, scripted, easy solution for our
software refresh procedure for the PC laptops which we loan out.
Thank you so much,
Robert
Robert Ralston wrote:
...
But with kernel 1.1.35w Build 2035w-unstable from the 1440 ODIN
distribution, everything works with a laptop *if and only if*
there is a floppy drive present. If there is a floppy drive either
in a bay or connected via USB, then the FreeDOS partition boots
normally. However, if that floppy drive is missing, then we
consistently get the message, after FreeDOS starts to load:
"Error in the DJ mechanism. IO error: cyclinder > 1023. Bad or
missing Command Interpreter. Enter the full shell command line:
command.com /P /E:256."
There was a recent fix to the unstable kernel to better support
floppyless systems. If possible please try a current 2035w from
http://www.fdos.org/kernel/ and let me know if that makes a
difference.
Note: -W is the development [UNSTABLE] kernel branch (more features
but less tested). There are also builds of updated stable (release
branch in cvs but not versioned releases) kernels here as well you
may wish to try.
At first I thought maybe there is something wrong in the MBR. Used
...
QUESTIONS:
What distribution had kernel 1.1.34 on it?
Is that distribution still available?
I don't recall, probably original Beta9 or Beta8; all distributions
from Alpha5 are still available so yes it is available; however, it
sounds like all you need is the kernel, so I would recommended
instead of downloading the whole distribution to check the FreeDOS
sourceforge site and just download the kernel directly (easiest way
to get a particular released kernel).
Any suggestions about what I may be doing wrong. I'm not a DOS
expert by any means.
sounds like you hit a kernel bug, testing to see if it is fixed in
current kernels would be of great help
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Robert
Jeremy
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