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From: dhinds@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Need help on weird disk FAST!
Message-ID: <11017@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Apr 90 21:38:31 GMT
References: <2778@milton.acs.washington.edu> <41361@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Sender: David Hinds <dhinds@portia.stanford.edu>
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Organization: Stanford University
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In article <41361@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) writes:
> pingpong@milton.acs.washington.edu (Jimmy) <2778@milton.acs.washington.edu> :
> [	has a floppy with a puzzling DOS.  Posting appended...	]
> 
> This sounds like a floppy that was formatted with an earlier version of
> MSDOS from one of the vendors that (for what reason?) named those system
> files MSDOS.SYS and IO.SYS (in Zenith's case; other names may also have
> been used).  That would be why you can't find IBMDOS.COM.  If the files
> are too specific to one machine (e.g., Z-100 DOS can't boot a real IBM)
> the error might be reported as "Incorrect DOS version number".  And because
> it's an old version, it doesn't leave enough room for a newer version.
> 
    As far as I know, the MSDOS system files are always called MSDOS.SYS and
IO.SYS.  The IBM*.SYS files are what IBM chose to call them in PCDOS.  I
think these files are sufficiently generic that they'll boot any old PC, but
they obviously don't work without a matching COMMAND.COM.  Just reformat the
disk, since there isn't anything else on it.

 -David Hinds
  dhinds@popserver.stanford.edu