DOS on pentium

[krulik]

hi everyone..
i'm just a little krulik and very new to this forum so i hope people will bother reading this..
well anyway, i have a little problem:
one day i figured that over the years i managed to acquire some nice collection of computer parts and assembled this machine:

award pnp bios (1997)
pentium mmx 200 mhz
64mb edo ram
seagate 130mb hd (as NORMAL CHS)
matrox 12gb hd (as LBA)

preety cool!

i wanted to install dos 6.2 on it with the 12gb as master hd (as boot partition) and the result after restarting was an infinite loop
of 'devide overflow'. i switched between the hd, and now i have the 130mb as the master with the dos booting from there.
the problem is when it loads config.sys, it halts on the line which loads SETVER.EXE and HIMEM.SYS.
any ideas?
maybe i cant run dos on pentium?
maybe the hd are bad?
maybe i did something stupid (probably)?

please help..!

[Eeyore]

Welcome to Virtual Dr.

In the CONFIG.SYS file you should have:
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
as the first line. This should get you booted to the prompt. On the second line you can add:
device=c:\dos\emm386.exe noems
Then add:
dos=high,umb
This should give you optimum memory. I suspect that setver.exe is supposed to be loaded from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file instead. That may be causing your lock.

To load devices such as a CDROM driver you would them use:
devicehigh=C:\CDROM\CDROM.SYS /d:mscd001
the high loads it in high memory keeping conventional memory free for your programs.

Please note that the 12gb drive cannot be accessed by DOS 6.2 unless it is partitioned as FAT16 which has a limit of 2.1gb for each partition. That means you will have to divide it up into at least 6 drives.
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[Platypus]

SETVER.EXE should be in CONFIG.SYS, as noted here for example:

http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/setver.exe.htm

but, krulik, I note you say "the line" which loads SETVER and HIMEM.SYS, are they both on one line in CONFIG.SYS?

If this isn't the problem, I'd suggest seeing if the system will boot from a DOS 6.2 boot floppy without AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, or from the hard drive with those files re-named. Or during boot up when "Starting MS-DOS" shows on the screen, immediately press F5, and the startup files will be bypassed. If DOS asks for time and date as normal when this is done, then something loading from CONFIG.SYS is the problem.

If HIMEM.SYS tests the memory as OK, then the startup locks, it's probably the next thing after HIMEM.SYS. Considering the Divide errors, an old CD-ROM driver is a possibility.

If it stops when HIMEM.SYS checks the memory, make the line for HIMEM.SYS read; DEVICE= ... HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF

If this stops the lockup, you may have faulty RAM.

There are some other possibilities, but that's some starters.

As well as Eeyore's suggestions, you'll also need in AUTOEXEC.BAT:

loadhigh C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /d:mscd001

[krulik]

thanx for replying people!
i will try your advices and i hope it will make some difference.
i just wanted to ask something meanwhile, my friend told me that maybe my dos copy is corrupted. could it be possible? if its bad, howcome it set up?

[Eeyore]

One thing at a time. If the setver.exe is causing the hang or another bad line in the CONFIG.SYS, no use throwing out the whole program. The computer boots from three files: IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM. If those are not corrupt, the system should boot with only those files. Those in the DOS directory and the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are accessories to enhance the system. So don't jump to conclusions until you elminate bad commands and such.


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