[SOLVED] OS installation woes from CDRom (FreeDOS on Pentium II)

[bjornworpel]

So I'm trying to install FreeDOS on my Pentium II, but the system seems to be having issues regarding the CDRom and how it reads and mounts it. I'm not sure if it's a problem with FreeDOS or with my system.

There are two versions of the installation disc - the Standard and the Legacy. Both these versions ultimately emulate the CDRom as a floppy drive, but the standard just does it in a more sophisticated way. (http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:Main_Page)

They both seem to boot after a fashion (with varying degrees of fiddling), but when the installation is supposed to actually start it tries to access the actual physical (not emulated) floppy drive and then tells me that it can't locate the installation packages (presumably because they're on the CD and not in the disk drive.)
It's almost like it's forgotten that it's supposed to be treating the CDRom as the floppy...

I guess I can just install from a floppy disk, but I'd also like to get to the bottom of this, especially as the CD version has a bunch more packages and things I would like to install as well.

Hope I've supplied all the relevant info...
Any help would be appreciated!

 

[TerryLaze]

It could be that your PC is just too old to boot with the emulated floppy method,it needs bios support and bios support is horrendous even today,download the free dos boot floppy and start your PC with that.

 

[bjornworpel]

It could be that your PC is just too old to boot with the emulated floppy method,it needs bios support and bios support is horrendous even today,download the free dos boot floppy and start your PC with that.

Well it certainly has some degree of support emulated floppy boot, because it gets as far as the install menu. Also I've been able to boot kolibri os which uses the same method. However even that has its dicey moments... Maybe older computers just handle this in a way the installer doesn't expect?

Do you know if there's any limitations to the floppy install?

 

[TerryLaze]

Do you know if there's any limitations to the floppy install?

When it comes to "installing" dos it's basically just copying over the files,rarely you have to provide a path in config.ini to tell your OS that it should include that path when it's searching for files.