my ms-dos 4.01 install disk and ms-dos shell disk dosn't read it display's general falure reading drive a retry,fail,abort these floppy's are 5.25 inch i need to know if it can be fixed
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my ms-dos 4.01 install disk and ms-dos shell disk dosn't read it display's general falure reading drive a retry,fail,abort these floppy's are 5.25 inch i need to know if it can be fixed
Doubtful. Those are very old disks, especially in 5 1/4 media. That is where the floppy disk got its name after all.
I still have several hundred disks sitting around and a system running DOS 5.0 that can actually read them still. It is fun to look back at old programs sometimes.
Shelf life on floppy disks is ony a couple of years. Thats the 1.44 media too.
These are over 10 years old.
One thing you can try though is to go to your local Walmart (or wherever) and get a can of compressed air. Blow out the drive. That might work. Dust in a 5 1/4 drive will cause it not to read the disks correctly.
Curiosity question. Why are you wanting to read DOS 4.01 disks anyway?
well someone gave me the complete set and iv'e been meaning to try them out plus i like old operating systems
Dos 4.01 is a vintage OS.
No cdrom or sound card support. That was DOS 5+
Entirely command line based. And you had to know the syntax or use a menuing program. I used Point and Shoot.
Did everything we needed though. WordStar and Lotus 123.
Never crashed. Not a single Blue Screen of Death!
I like the old OSes too.
Newer does not mean better!
originally i had a computer that we brought ages ago it was a windows 386 and it crashed that's why it was given to me but i found that the hard drive was brocken so i took the 5.25 inch drive out of it and put in my 486
i have not tried compressed air yet but it reads all disks exept for the install disk and ms-dos shell disks
Unfortunately your disks might have gone to software heaven!
All disk drives and disks will fail. That is only a matter of time.
MSDOS 4.01 came originally on 6 5.25 media.
Windows version 1.0A came on two 5.25 disks. I actually have it.
I dont remember if it was 720K or 1.2k media.
I am curios if you actually got DOS 4.01 to boot on this sytem at this point.
yes the operating 3 disk boot's it up but i still can't install it though
Having not dealt with that operating system, I would expect that the files on those disks are not compressed, as DOS 5 and 6 are. If the disk boots the computer, you should be able to copy the files to a hard drive. If the "SYS" command functions, that should allow making the computer bootable from the system. "Installation" is more of a convinience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodney01
I have copied DOS 2.2 and DOS 5 and 6 from 5" disk to 3.5" disks, and even modified the INI file so that the install program would install from 2ea 3.5" disk rather thant the original 4ea 5" disks.
I would certainly copy all the files to newer media before they become totally unreadable. In disk duplication I have copied the image of a 5" disk to a 1.44 3.5" disk. The new 3.5" disk reported as a 1.2mb disk.
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Dennis
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Hogwash, Data on floppy disks can last for years and years and years.
Floppy diskettes can also last for years and years and years.
Data on even the oldest floppy diskettes should still be readable.
I think that message can appear when the CMOS settings for the floppy drive are incorrect.
Under ideal conditions, yes. One rarely encounters ideal conditions, so please don't deride someone else's experience.;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert M
Well I guess it's consistent with his argument that hard drives never fail. http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...d.php?t=199990 sot it makes sense that floppys wouldn't either - even less in them to go wrongQuote:
Originally Posted by lgbpop
I sure wish I had cash for all the floppies I have had go bad.
Buy myself a new computer!
Yeah, I kept dropping those and the bits and bytes just went all whilly nilly!
Train, I agree
If you threw away diskettes every time you saw this message or some of the other messages that may be seen working with floppies, and incorrectly assumed they were bad, you probably could buy another computer with the cash wasted on floppies.
About the only things floppies cannot stand up to are magnetic fields and extreme heat, for example leaving them in a hot car in the summer with the windows up.
Floppy disk drives nor floppy diskettes should be assumed bad when encountering this message without further investigation of CMOS settings, the capacity of the floppy diskette and whether it matches the capacity of the floppy drive being used, whether or not the floppy has been formatted correctly,the operating system being used, and whether or not the drive door is closed.
I wish I had a nickel for everyone who ever bought replacement computer equipment like floppy disks and drives, hard disks, video cards, and modems that they didn't really need or bought as a result of seeing a message on the screen.
I doubt that's what Train had in mind. I guess I'm happy for you, never having anything go bad ever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert M.
Quote:
Open your mind, not your computer.
Thanks Meldan24 for quoting my signature message, I think the more often people see it, the better.
I had a computer monitor fail once but never a motherboard, memory module, floppy drive, hard drive, adapter card, modem, mouse or CD-ROM drive.
Robert M, I was being polite earlier when I asked you to lay off the arguing. Since you don't have PMs enabled and since you won't let this bone go, I'm telling you bluntly: Knock it off. No one appreciates having their thread hijacked by someone who wants to argue. Maybe you've never had something go belly-up, or won't admit to it, but others have.
Also, I didn't think meldan24's post needed explaining, but maybe it does. It looks to me as if he was telling you to practice what you preach.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert M
Then you have had extremely good luck which is most unusual with computers.
But when I run across clients who have had that luck, generally it means they do not USE their computers very much. To wit, maybe a little email, a page or two of surfing a month or even, never getting on the internet.
lgbpop,
It's also against the rules of the forum to deliberately mislead people with false information.
I am merely letting the truth shine.
I assume you will send others in this post the PM messages saying the same thing to them if they are not disabled, if not, you should give them heck here and now as well.
Train,
I use a couple different computers for an average of about three hours a day, and am not extremely lucky. I have terrible luck as a matter of fact. Many millions of people have NEVER had to replace any hardware.
I didn't nor will I send others the same message. You weren't called to task for your opinion - it's because of the rudeness with which you put down everyone's opinion but your own. The person who started this thread had a legitimate question, and people who answered it had legitimate answers, skewered by you as hogwash. This is rude and disruptive.
If you're going to bring up the AUP, so will I:
Why you feel the need to act this way is beyond me; it's not appreciated. I expect this will be the end of the disruption.Quote:
You will not behave in an abusive and/or hateful manner, and will not harrass, threaten, nor attack anyone.
i have tried different cmos settings for the drive it dosnt help me at all i also do have a data recovery program for floppys havent tried it yet
In my experience floppies have a 10-20% failure rate in a short space of time.
I wonder, perhaps you could get some replacement disks on ebay, might be worth a look.
But what everyone seems to forget is that these original floppy disks are at least 15+ years old 5 1/4 1.2 megabyte format. All magnetic media fails, period! All electronics fail too.
Nothing lasts forever, not even us.
How many of you actually have a computer that is currently capable of reading the 5 1/4 1.2 meg media that the original posters disks are on, if you are old enough to remember that?
Not very many!
Any at all?
I bet not!
My C64 disk drive used to read those sort of floppys, even a whole bunmch that had been submerged in muddy water and then in clean water a few times to clean the mud out and then left to dry.
Then I lent the C64 and all software etc to my parents for my younger syster to learn touch typing and when she moved out of home they threw it out !!!!!!!!
But that was at least 15 years ago.
I've got a working (last time I plugged it in - about 2 years ago) 5 1/4 drive in a box in my garage. Also got a bunch of disks, only 50% of which could be read last time I tried.
i managed to get a copy of ms-dos 4.01 and windows 386 on 3.5 inch floppy drive
Make some copies quick :D