Installing_FreeDOS/149

FreeDOS Migration Guide - from MS-DOS or Windows 9x

"netdottmfcatjohnson" / Wed Nov 19 23:30:01 2003

Author: Johnson Lam
Contact: johnson-tmfc=net (avoid spam. change = to dot, - to at)

Migration Guide - from MS-DOS or Windows 9x (Version 0.1)
---------------------------------------------------------

Hello Friends,

Maybe you're one of the early MS-DOS user, or you suddenly feel 
interest in FreeDOS. But when you're about to start, you figure out
 the problem is ... you know little about FreeDOS!

The objective of FreeDOS is a completely free version of the popular
 MS-DOS, the look and feel of both is very similar except MS-DOS is
 dead, but FreeDOS is the phoenix that risen from the fire, now many
 developers is writing code and updating FreeDOS from time to time.

First Step: Get a copy of FreeDOS

There're lots of distribution of FreeDOS. At the time of writing, the
 official distribution is [ 2003-09-28 ] FreeDOS Beta 9 Distribution,
 both floppy and CD-ROM are ISO image. You can download from the link
 below:

http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files

For impatient users (like me). I strongly recommend a one disk
 distribution of FreeDOS - Odin 5.0. Which the content was finely 
selected by Steve Nickolas (Usotsuki), links below:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distribu
tions/1disk

After unzipped, you can see only 4 files here, don't worry ... this is
 a disk image. Now read the 'readme.1st' and use diskcopy to write the
 image to floppy. Odin is bootable, you can insert the Odin floppy 
disc
 and boot the PC.



Second Step: Install to hard disk

Before any operation, please make a MS-DOS boot disk and backup 
all the files.

For MS-DOS 6.2x user, upgrade to FreeDOS is easy and straight forward.
 First boot up the FreeDOS floppy disc, then issue the command:

SYS A: C:

and remember make a new directory in hard disk and copy the all 
FreeDOS
 files to it, lastly modify the content of CONFIG.SYS and 
AUTOEXEC.BAT,
 change the path to FreeDOS's directory. FreeDOS have it's own
 HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, they've nothing to do with Microsoft, just
 use it's filename.

For Windows9x user and having FAT32 partition, operation is more or
 less the same as MS-DOS, except some of the FAT32 support is not 
fully
 supported.

Please DON'T format your hard disk with FreeDOS's format. Up to Format
 0.91e the FAT32 support for hard disk still have some issue, so if 
you
 really want to format your hard disk, temporary use MS-DOS to format
 the hard disk. It'll be fixed soon.

After formatting the hard disk, you can make a directory 
call 'FREEDOS'
 (or whatever you like) and copy all the files from floppy to hard
 disk, the command is:

C:
MD FREEDOS
COPY A:*.* C:\FREEDOS

To make the hard disk bootable, use:

SYS A: C:

to copy FreeDOS's system files to hard disk and make it bootable, 
after
 the prompt return, try press RESET button or CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot.
 FreeDOS should be able to boot from hard disk.


III. Install other drivers (CD-ROM, sound card ... etc)

Basically your own copy of FreeDOS is ready for use. Of course, 
there're some GPL or public domain device drivers for your CD-ROM and
 sound card was not included. Try access the SOFTWARE session from
 FreeDOS main page, then try to search BASELIST for the public domain
 CD-ROM driver "ATAPICDD.SYS". Remember to read the documentation with
 it, you have to know what kind of parameter it use. 

For sound card, it's a bit trouble because most of the sound card
 nowadays only support windows. For example, I've a ACER PC with 
ESSOLO
 onboard sound chip, and fail to found the driver for DOS. Luckily, I
 got the driver for Windows 3.1 and I'm able to extract 3 files from
 it, ESSOLO.SYS, ESSOLO.INI and ESSOLO.COM. Just put them in 
CONFIG.SYS
 and AUTOEXEC.BAT and they simply worked without any parameters! Try
 search your sound card's driver with GOOGLE (http://www.google.com).


IV. Enhance FreeDOS with New programs

Does everything work properly? I hope you can migrate easily and
 happily. It's time we can go a bit further ... by replacing some 
files
 with a better function.

Here's some the file below, just replace it! Most of them work in the
 same way MS-DOS did:


MS-DOS			FreeDOS
------			-------
HIMEM.SYS		FDXXMS.SYS
EMM386.EXE		UMBPCI.SYS
MSCDEX.EXE		SHSUCDX.EXE
OAKCDROM.SYS		ATAPICDD.SYS
MOUSE.COM		CTMOUSE.EXE

(UMBPCI is here: http://www.uwe-sieber.de/umbpci_e.html)


V. Keep updating FreeDOS

Keep visiting FreeDOS home for latest update. If you have any problem,
 try to access the forum, link below:

General questions for user: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-user
Technical questions for developer: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-dev
Kernel related questions: http://www.topica.com/lists/fd-kernel


I'm sorry for my bad english. Should have many grammer and spelling
 mistake or even technical mistake. I'm waiting for you nice people.
 Please help me to correct them, thanks!


VI. Appendix

Thanks for Eric Auer providing details of the FreeDOS frequently use
 programs and help me to revise this document. I try to summarize and
 simpified the pages of data and list below:

FDXXMS.SYS - allows > 64 MB XMS but not compatible to EMM386.EXE(?)

EMM386.EXE - Enables UMBs and EMS, but blocks protected mode usage
 (e.g. DPMI), must be installed in CONFIG.SYS with DEVICE=

UMBPCI.SYS - Enables hardware-UMBs on some chipset (read document). No
 EMS provided but allow protected mode. May collide with programs that
 use DMA, check with the DMACHK.EXE and exclude non-DMA range manually

SHSUCDX.EXE - Replace MSCDEX, no builtin cache, use CDRcache with it

ATAPICDD.SYS - Generic PIO CD-ROM driver, it is slower than the other
CD-ROM drivers, use it if you have no other choice

CTMOUSE.EXE - A BIOS version and a hardware version available. Usually
 we stick to BIOS one because it work with USB mice (need BIOS 
support)

Soundcards - For Soundblaster compatible, use the same old DOS drivers
 and set the BLASTER variable to the right value is enough. Then sound
 output depends on your software to "drive" the soundcard


History
-------
19-Nov-2003	0.1 Initial release	


[ End of document ]

----------- Additional comments:

Version 0.2 will be on the link below:

netdottmfcatjohnson / Fri Nov 21 01:26:35 2003

From now on, please visit my homepage for further update:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/freedos

----------- Additional comments:

This has also been added to the FreeDOS Mini How-tos

jhall@freedos.org / Fri Feb 6 08:00:31 2004

See also
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=20916&group_id=18412

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