Very old hard drive Need help on this 3

[xit]

I have an old Seagate drive with a capacity of 130mb, yes mb. This drive works, came out of a dead system, and contains a DOS program that is needed by a local grocery store. Now here is what I need help on, I am reluctant to just put this drive into a system and let them have it without some sort of backup, is it possible to mirror this drive to a newer, larger hard drive. Since this is a DOS program and the unused space on the drive is only 46mb, what are my options as I have not worked with DOS in ages.

thanks

xit

 

[Freestone]

Do you mean the OS is DOS, or only the program itself is DOS? If it's a DOS OS, what version is it?

The first thing I'd do is image the drive for backup purposes and put the backup in a safe place. Use Acronis or Ghost or some like program.

In the good old DOS days, a program usually installed itself in its own directory, no INI files or registry entries to worry about. If that is the case here, perhaps you can port that directory into a newer OS, such as XP or Windows 7 and see if it'll work. Perhaps even better would be to set up a Virtual PC session and import the entire drive into it.

If it is a DOS only system, you may run into issues if it used the serial port for interfacing to something. I'm not so sure how well newer OS's or a virtual session will like that.

Perhaps if you describe the OS and what the DOS program does and its interface(s), we all can give better opinions.

 

[vacunita]

I think your best bet is in fact to plug it into another system as a slave, and then copy the Program Directory to a CD or USB drive for safe keeping.

Being a DOS based Program, it should just up and run.
Though if it accesses some type of hardware like the serial port or parallel port you may have some trouble getting it to work on a newer system if only because the access to the hardware it requires may not be possible.

If its completely isolated then you should be able to persuade Windows to run it, using the Compatibility Mode options for the executable.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xit]

Thanks for the replies, here is where I am at. when the old drive is master the program that they need comes right up, period, giving a list of things to accomplish within the program, Now If I slave the disk I am able to explore it through Windows Explorer, there I see it is Dos 5. & I can see all the other folders and files. Now after going into control panel & check to "show all hidden files"
, I transfered the entire content to both a flash drive and a folder on the master drive. Any idea from here, can I slave a formatted hard drive and from that data folder I had made transfer everything to that drive and expect it to be bootable, or would it not restore the files in the correct manner to have a bootable disk

Thanks again

xit

 

[Freestone]

It's been a long, long time since I've used DOS, so we are in the same boat.

Assuming the system in question has a disk drive, I thibk you may want to download a DOS 5 boot disk from

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm,

create the diskette and boot from it. FDISK the new disk with a small partition, mark it as active, format it and the SYS it. Copy all the files you said you saved (including the hidden ones), make the new drive Master and hopefully you'll be in business.

 

[vacunita]

Any idea from here, can I slave a formatted hard drive and from that data folder I had made transfer everything to that drive and expect it to be bootable

You never said you wanted the dos disk to be bootable in the new machine. I thought you wanted to run the Application from within the Windows Environment of the new machine. Not boot into DOS and then run the App.

If you want to make a Bootable drive with dos, you'll need a Dos floppy and then use the "format X: /s " command from the floppy to format the new drive and make it bootable.

You can get a floppy from

http://www.bootdisk.com

Then yes technically copying back the data folder onto the drive should be all it takes, though if the app loads immediately upon booting you may need to take a look at the autoexec.bat file and copy that to the new drive's autoexec.bat file. Its likely it has an entry for the app that makes it run when the Dos environment loads.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xit]

thank you both for your input. I still have all my old Dos floppies stored away, thought I would never need them again, so I will give it a go. This is way too much trouble for an old program but a challenge none the less.
I will post back my findings.

Thanks
xit

 

[Freestone]

One area of concern is how will DOS handle the large drives available today, which is why I suggested using DOS' own FDISK to create your first, and likely only, primary partition. Don't forget to mark this partition as ACTIVE. Once the partition is created, Phil's suggestion of "format X: /s" combines my suggestion of format then SYS.

I also like Phil's idea of copying only the program folder rather than all files, including hidden. This seems to be the best way of avoiding mixing DOS versions and/or levels. Remember there was PC-DOS (IBM) and MS-DOS (Microsoft).

Good luck!

 

[xit]

Well one problem is I cannot identify the program from other files. The hard drive issue, I have many 1Gb and smaller drives I have saved away over the years, so they may eliminate one problem.

DOS being numbered 5.0 would that suggest that it is infact MS based or was IBM DOS numbered somewhat the same as I am not familiar with IBM DOS?

xit

 

[vacunita]

Well one problem is I cannot identify the program from other files.

Really? It doesn't have a folder of its own?

You said the Program comes right up when you boot form the hard drive as i suggested in my earlier post, take a look at autoexec.bat That's usually where you put programs you want to load on start up of the OS.

You could copy and paste the contents of autoexec.bat and paste it here, we may be able to identify the program for you.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Freestone]

I remember an IBM DOS 5, but was it 5.00, 5.01 or 5.02?

At any rate, a VER command would show you what version and maker, for example MS-DOS Version 6.22. I will have to wait until tomorrow to have access to older IBM DOS diskettes.

As Phil suggests, indeed do post AUTOEXEC.BAT and while you are at it, posting CONFIG.SYS may prove a little helpful to.

 

[edfair]

Both had a 5. Ver should identify it as PCDOs or MSDos.

Programs that start like yours generally are started directly from the autoexec.bat file or from a batch file either called from autoexec.bat or fallen thru from autoexec.

In any case, to start up the program will have a line in some batch file identifying the program name and possibly a path to it, although there is a possibility that the path will be defined earlier in autoexec.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[xit]

I am getting closer at any rate, as the drive boots up & just before the program starts I managed to press the pause key & yes indeed it is MS DOS 5. After spending some time going through the folders and files I had saved, I found two shortcuts that look interesting. There is so much stuff out of wack, such as, There is a folder labled windows, I double click on setup & it says Windows 3.11 will be installed. There are too many folders and files to be just DOS & 1 program but it is only using 56Mb of space.

This is a readme txt in DOS that i managed to open.

README.TXT

NOTES ON MS-DOS VERSION 5.0
===========================

This readme provides important information not included in the
Microsoft MS-DOS User's Guide and Reference or in online
Help.

So I know what version for sure.

I will try to post the files you requested.

xit

 

[edfair]

You may very well have windows 3.11 installed. Can't recall exactly how much room it took to install but it was something like 10mb of disk files for the install (7x1.44) plus the space required for the expanded files. Then there would be the DOS files, somewhat less than the 5mb for 6.22.

Nothing like typing win at the dos prompt and see if it comes up. A lot of people didn't use automatic startup, just started the GUI up when they needed it.

If the W311 install files had been copied into the windows directory your "install" command would have worked exactly as intended.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Freestone]

The posting of the 2 files should go a long way to help figure out what is being run at boot.

If you srill want to try the conplete copy of files rather than sorting out the mess, go ahead and partition and format /s the newer drive. Then when you copy over the old drive files, if you are sure your installed DOS version matches what you are copying, copy all files, otherwise avoid copying hidden files IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, file COMMAND.COM and any files in the DOS subdirectory.

It can't hurt to try the copying of files. Worse thing will be you'd have to reformat and start again if it doesn't work, along with some time lost.

 

[xit]

With your excellent help & generous amounts of my time, I did manage to make a drive copy. Thank you one and all. Let it be said, my Dos disketts will be put away, far away, and forgotten about rather quickly, some things are best left alone. lol

xit

 

[edfair]

But there are some of us that will still have them available when you need them again.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.