Hi there,
On Sun, 22 Sep 2024, barry m wrote:
Hello again
:)
I downloaded the CD live zip for cd and later for usb
After extracting onto sisk and stick I tried to boot computer -
with cd - error message - non system disk.
with usb - disk I/O error - replace disk
I'm not having much luck
It looks like you're still using some form of file copying which will
be using filesystem tools to write files onto your USB or CD media.
As I explained (for floppies) in my previous diatribe, that's not
going to work because what you need to write onto the medium that
you're going to use to boot the computer is an image, not a file.
The confusing part is that the image is actually IN a file when it's
stored anywhere - like on the FreeDOS Website, or on your computer.
But you can't write it to the boot medium using copy, unzip, extract,
or any of those kinds of things, which all expect to use a filesystem
existing on the target medium to write the data onto it.
You need to use an image write program which for example for a CD can
take a .ISO image and burn it to a totally blank CD in one operation,
creating the filesystem structure on the CD on the fly as it writes.
If your computer is capable of booting from a USB stick - that wasn't
as common as being able to boot from CDs in the early days - then it's
probably best to use the USB stick approach because they're so easy to
rewrite if you mess it up. So grab a copy of
.../freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-FullUSB.zip
which I'm guessing you've already done.
In that Zip archive file there are three files. Here's the output
from the 'list' function of 'atool' (an archive manipulation tool):
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive: FD13-FullUSB.zip
Length Date Time Name
--------- ---------- ----- ----
536870912 2022-02-20 06:03 FD13FULL.img
530 2022-02-20 06:03 FD13FULL.vmdk
6521 2022-02-20 06:03 readme.txt
--------- -------
536877963 3 files
8<----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note that unlike the archive for the floppy images, the files in this
archive are not in subdirectories, so probably, when you extract them,
unless you tell the extraction utilty where they should be placed they
will be in the current directory. That might or might not be what you
want, but you do NOT want to extract them directly to the USB stick or
other storage medium from which you eventually want to boot.
Extract them to a new directory that you created on a disc (or other
mass storage device) on any old computer. After you've done that, you
will then use the computer to write one single file from the directory
where you stored the contents of the Zip file to the medium (USB stick)
from which you want to boot FreeDOS.
The file you want to write is "FD13FULL.img". The USB stick needs to
have a sufficiently large capacity (more than about 537 megabytes) but
it's not often you see one as small as that thesedays. If it's bigger
(even if it's a LOT bigger) it doesn't matter. You're probably going
to use it to boot and install FreeDOS, then use it for something else.
You need to perform an "image write" of the file "FD13FULL.img" to the
USB stick. As I said in earlier diatribes I'd use 'dd' for that but I
don't know what tools you have which can do the image write. When you
find such a tool it might help others who come along later if you tell
us on this list what it is, how you found it, how you got a copy, how
you used it to write the image file, how you told the computer to boot
with it, and what happened when FreeDOS successfully booted. :)
In case it isn't clear note that when you perform an image write like
this the original content (if any) of the target medium will be lost.
PS: you haven't been copying your questions to the list, please do so
that others may benefit.
--
73,
Ged.
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