Hi there,
On Sat, 21 Sep 2024, barry m wrote:
Hello again - I am answering your questions you asked me.
1. I am trying to get a set of floppy disks to install freedos on a 111 gb
hard drive.
It isn't necessary to use floppies to install, you could for example
use a CD/DVD if you can write one. That would probably be a lot more
convenient because floppies are so small and you need several to get a
working system. But in what follows I'm going to assume for whatever
reason that you can't use a CD and you need to use floppies.
2. I downloaded the zip file from Freedos.org/download onto my Dell with
windows 7 pro desktop
I clicked on the zip file to open it - there are 3 options - 120m - 144m -
720k
I clicked the 144m - which opened to 6 files = x86BOOT - x86DSK01 - 05
I selected the x86BOOT and clicked the Extract Files - I was asked where
files were to go - to A:
Got error message - not enough space needs extra 22.9m - the floppy is 144m.
I tried the 720k - with 11 files - got same error message.
The tool which you are using to extract the files doesn't understand
what you want it to do. Don't forget floppies have been obsolete for
a long time. The programmers who wrote some of the tools we use might
never have seen floppies in their lives!
If I understand correctly, you have downloaded
.../freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-FloppyEdition.zip
If that's wrong please let me know, because everything below assumes
it's right...
This is a compressed archive of floppy images. There are images for
each of the three most common floppy formats, that is 720k (this is
for 3.5" Double-Sided Single-Density discs); 1200k (this is for 5.25"
Double-Sided High-Density discs) and 1440k (3.5" Double Sided / Double
Density). You will only need one of the three sets unless you want to
make a set for each format of floppy. Because these are image files,
see below, you must choose the right set for the floppies you're going
to use. The images must be written to the right type of floppy.
I downloaded the archive file and examined it with a tool that I use
called 'atool'. Below I've cut-n-pasted the screen output that I saw
when I used atool to list the files in the archive:
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
$ atool -l FD13-FloppyEdition.zip
Archive: FD13-FloppyEdition.zip
Length Date Time Name
--------- ---------- ----- ----
0 2022-02-20 06:03 120m/
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86BOOT.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK01.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK02.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK03.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK04.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK05.img
1228800 2022-02-20 12:50 120m/x86DSK06.img
0 2022-02-20 06:03 144m/
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86BOOT.img
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86DSK01.img
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86DSK02.img
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86DSK03.img
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86DSK04.img
1474560 2022-02-20 12:50 144m/x86DSK05.img
0 2022-02-20 06:03 720k/
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86BOOT.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK01.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK02.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK03.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK04.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK05.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK06.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK07.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK08.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK09.img
737280 2022-02-20 12:50 720k/x86DSK10.img
6521 2022-02-20 06:03 readme.txt
--------- -------
25565561 28 files
$
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
After you write a file such as 144m/x86BOOT.img from this archive to a
floppy, and then list the files on the floppy using for example the
'DIR' command, you will *not* see a file called 'x86BOOT.img' on it.
The image writing process creates a complete new filesystem on the
floppy and there will be all sorts of stuff in it. You *can* look in
the raw image file using tools which understand how to do that but I
won't go into that here other than to show you some of what's on the
image of the 1.44MByte boot disc. Apologies if you aren't using a
fixed pitch like I'm using. :/
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
$ ls -R /media/
/media/:
fdauto.bat fdconfig.sys freedos KERNEL.SYS setup.bat
/media/freedos:
bin configs nls version.fdi
/media/freedos/bin:
attrib.com cp850.v8f cp866.v8f fc.exe fdisk.exe
fdwrapup.bat mem.exe setver.sys vask.com vcursor.com
vecho.com vfont.com vinfo.com vprogres.com xcopy.exe
command.com cp857.v8f deltree.com fdapm.com fdisk.ini
format.exe more.exe slicerex.exe vchoice.com vdelay.com
verrlvl.com vframe.com vline.com vstr.com country.sys
cp858.v8f fasthelp.bat fdbanner.com fdiskpt.ini kernl386.sys
setlang.bat sys.com vcls.com veach.com vfdutil.com
vgotoxy.com vpause.com welcome.bat
/media/freedos/configs:
autoexec.dbx autoexec.def autoexec.vbx config.086 config.186
config.286 config.dbx config.def config.vbx
/media/freedos/nls:
setup.de setup.en setup.es setup.fr setup.sv
setup.tr slicer.de slicer.en slicer.es slicer.fr
slicer.sv slicer.tr welcome.de welcome.en welcome.eo
welcome.es welcome.fr ...
$
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking at the total size (25565561 bytes) of the 28 files in the
archive, and at your error message which tells you that you need an
extra 22.9 megabytes on your storage medium to write all the data, I
suspect that your archive extraction tool is (1) trying to extract the
entire contents of the archive, not just parts of it and (2) trying to
put all that on a single floppy.
That's not going to work, for two reasons. Firstly and most obviously
the floppy isn't big enough. But more important than that, the files
in the archive are 'image' files and they cannot be copied to floppies
using the normal 'COPY' command(s). The normal copy comands rely on
the existence of filesystems on the source and destination media - but
when you write an image file to a floppy you're actually creating the
filesystem on the destination media at the same time. Tools like COPY
can't do that, you need something which can write an image file to the
drive, sector by sector. I don't use Windows, and I don't know if it
has a built-in image copying tool, but I'm sure there must be several
in existence which you can find online. There might even be something
about that in the FreeDOS documentation but unfortunately the FreeDOS
Wiki is offline just now because of spam attacks so I can't check.
On Linux I would use a tool called 'dd', there are Windows versions
around online, but I've never used one and couldn't vouch for any of
them. Maybe others on this list can help. It's pretty easy to use dd
but you do need to be careful with it, so that you don't for example
accidentally write data to the wrong drive (which will usually trash
the data on it to the point that you'd need someone very knowledgeable
about filesystems to recover any of it - if it's even possible).
Long story short: extract the archive to some hard drive somewhere and
then use a tool to write the individual images ONE AT A TIME from the
hard drive to your floppies. If the floppies are 1440kByte capacity
(that is standard 3.5" DS/DD 1.44MByte) you will need six of them, and
you must use the six image files from the directory '144m' in the
archive to write one of images on each floppy. Be careful.
Incidentally the care and feeding of floppy drives is a whole subject
in itself. Cleanliness is exceedingly important, especially now that
we're all using ancient hardware and only slightly less ancient media.
I strongly recommend searching online for tutorials on cleaning floppy
drives, and especially the heads. They're fragile. Make sure you're
using good quality floppies. I've had a floppy which left nearly all
its magnetic coating inside the drive after one atttempt to read it.
Read as much as you can about that kind of thing if you're going to be
using floppies more than casually.
I would also like to know what is the largest partition size freedos can
manage?
And how many partitions can it manage.
It isn't perfectly straightforward to give answers to those questions
because it can depend on things like your BIOS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeDOS#File_systems
I don't think you should have any problems using all of your 111GByte
drive, even if you have to partition it into four smaller partitions
of around 32GByte.
HTH
--
73,
Ged.
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